


Pacific

by MooseFeels, thimblings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Dreams, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mental Anguish, Mental Health Issues, Mental Institutions, Multi, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Road Trips, Travel, great american west
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-07
Updated: 2014-11-07
Packaged: 2018-02-24 10:07:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2577632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MooseFeels/pseuds/MooseFeels, https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimblings/pseuds/thimblings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been eight years since Dean Winchester has seen his little brother, nearly five since he actually set foot on solid ground. When John dies, Dean sets out on a trip from the very corner of Maine to California to let him know. On the way, he picks up Castiel, who pulls up in him those things from his childhood he's tried to shove away. And Dean pulls up in Castiel the kind of sensation he's been trying to hide for four years. </p><p>It's a long trip. A lot can happen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pacific

**Author's Note:**

> It's hard to fully express how much this story means to me. I worked on this for so long and it went through so many different iterations and meanings. I wasn't sure how I would get where it ended up but I always knew where I wanted it to go, which is unusual for me. I love this work. I'm proud of this work. I hope you like it.  
> Special thanks to Ela, who worked as hard on this thing as I did and to thimblings, who provided this love art.

Dean hates the suit with its polyester itch and plastic tie. It doesn’t fit quite- it’s too big in the shoulders and torso, too long in the sleeves, too short in the inseam. It’s not Dean’s suit, but it’s the only one that was there. A cheap suit. A fed suit.

The air in the church is still and heavy, and sweat is soaking his collar. For the love of god, it’s the twenty-first century, you’d think they’d have air conditioning or even a fan or that they wouldn’t use that fucking potpourri shit. Makes his throat tickle.

He loosens his tie a little, but it doesn’t do much good. He’ll be okay in a little bit, it’ll be over soon. But he’s not fine yet. No, not yet.

The priest stops in his eulogy, looks at Dean, and says, “Son, if you want to cut it short, I don’t think anyone would blame you.”

He got the call two days ago. He spent his last paycheck to get here, sleeping on Greyhounds up from Florida where the fishing boat left him, walking the last few miles to this nowhere town in Maine. First time in months he’s been on solid land, and he’s already got blisters.

He didn’t think there’d ever be a reason for him to go back.

The pew is hard under his ass, the thin cushion over the yellow stained pine not doing much to disguise the quality of the wood—or of the establishment, really. It’s an old place that doesn’t seem like it gets much business anymore. The walls are a color of mauve that hasn’t been in fashion in thirty years; the fake flowers in the halls, the bathroom, the parlor are all fleeced with dust. The hymnal he’s been thumbing through is missing thirty pages, but he doubts that anyone’s noticed.

The priest is ancient; the decor moreso.

Dean looks up at the priest, then down at the coffin.

Excluding the body in the long, wooden box, Dean and the priest are the only ones in the chapel.

Dean stands from where he’s been sitting in that front pew and walks to the coffin, legs tingling. He looks at it for a long moment, at the smooth pine, the dark burls. Looks back at the room and its empty pews. At the old priest, standing at the podium, who is looking back at him. His gaze drifts up to the old stained glass window with grime around the edges. The tinny, pre-recorded version of “Beulah Land” echoes in the near-empty room. Not something John would have picked; just a stand-by, then, for when bodies came with no instructions. Something dead men wouldn’t mind.

The potpourri. The suit. The still, hot air.

Dean nods and strides down the aisle and out the door.

He doesn’t stay to see his father put in the ground, but there’s nowhere else for John to go now. No more disappearing acts, no more letters from nowhere, no more calls from dead numbers on burner phones.

Dean sits on the old concrete steps of the city hall of the weird little town in Maine his dad’s getting buried in. Apparently he rambled out here after Dean left him in Arizona. After the fight. Stopped living hotel to hotel. Got a cabin, a home. Somewhere with pleasant-looking weeds around it. From the curb, it almost looks like somebody could like living there—could make a life there.

Dean doesn’t want to go in. He stood in front of it for a good four hours this morning, a good six hours last night. Looked at every knot and burl in the wood, every aged shingle on the roof. The pile of newspapers gathering steadily on the stoop, the mailbox probably pregnant with letters, bills, and coupon books. He has the key, and it burns and bites into his hand.

Figures the old son of a bitch would finally settle down when it’s just him. White siding, old roof, wooden walls and floors with hot burning stoves in the winter. Places for kids to exist and play and—

“Goddamnit,” Dean mutters under his breath, sitting there in the late summer sun. It’s cooler up here, not as humid. He feels sweat on his brow nonetheless. A prickling, heart-fluttering feeling is frizzing through his body. He doesn’t like it. Not at all.

The car waits in front of the steps, in front of him.

She is long and black, made of clean, sharp lines that seem to settle down into the pavement. Heavy. Tough. She looks like a blur of black paint, an impressionist horizon line. This car—Goddamn, this car.

Dean stands and touches her gently, like he’s settling a horse. He’s had the car for about eight hours now, but it’s still weird. Still new. Dean loves this car. This car was the only stable thing in his life for so long. His childhood home, his confidante. His mother.

“Hey, baby,” he murmurs. Feels the edges of the keys in his pocket. (These keys, though, are a promise.)

His bag is already in the trunk. His wallet with a bank card and cash and a driver’s license—a real goddamn driver’s license in his name from the state of Florida, where he’s a registered goddamn resident—sits on the dash where he tossed it. The title and insurance (the latter probably a fake) sit in the glove compartment.

Dean unlocks the door, folds himself into the driver’s seat, sticks the key in the ignition, and wraps his hands around her steering wheel. Sighs heavily, breathes her in.

She still smells right after all of these years.

He turns the engine, and the street is filled with her predator’s purr.

* * *

Once he hits the city limits, the pavement ends and the woods begin. Maine has these dense evergreen woods, moss-rich and beautiful. The fog boils out of the woods, enfolding the car, rolling over the road. In the haze of the day, their trunks are black, then turn to gray, to silver, to white. Up near the road, most of the trees are young—only thirty or so years. But some of these trees, he knows, have been here centuries.

He loves this part of the country. They didn’t spend too much time up here when he was a kid, but he has fond memories of the ancient woods and frigid beaches rich with stones.

It doesn’t surprise him that John would settle here.

After a while, he realizes that he doesn’t know where he’s going yet. He’s just driving, following the curves, thinking of nothing.

Dean’s been on the road for a few hours before he realizes he’s heading west and what that means.

Shit, he doesn’t even—he doesn’t even have Sam’s number anymore.

He’s got to tell him, though. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been. It doesn’t matter. He has a right to know. Dean pulls over to the side of the road and sits and looks at the road in front of him.

Stanford is literally the whole country away. A whole continent stretched before him like an open map. He can drive south to Jersey, catch eighty and ride it all the way through, across the country to see his brother.

He doesn’t count back the years. He can’t.

He can’t think about what he’ll do if Sam isn’t there. He’ll figure that out, if that happens.

He has to see Sam. Just to tell him, if nothing else. Doesn’t have to be a hugging and crying moment. Doesn’t have to be some glorious reunion. He just has to let him know.

And then if his brother wants it, he can never seen him again. Can drive back to Maine and clear out that house and drive back down to Florida, catch whatever fishing boat is in the harbor and never step foot back in this damn country again. Die at sea if he sees fit.

Dean pulls back out into road and drives on.

I-80 calls him like a song.

Robert Plant croons like a siren in the radio, sounds tangled like nets.

* * *

Castiel can’t keep his hands from moving. People find it unsettling, but it’s honestly one of the only things that keep him sane. Mostly sane.

He’s glad it isn’t winter any more. Castiel hates the winter, hates climbing into the shelters with everyone else, hates how his space gets smaller and smaller until the bubble between him and everyone else is barely outside of his own skin. It’s so hard to control around that many people, it’s so hard to think. One or two people like you run into in the library, that’s fine. That he can handle. More than that, though, and there’s just so much noise and movement and everything at once that he fights hard not to pick and pluck and tear, but sometimes—sometimes, well—so there are patches of his skin (the heels of his hands especially) that don’t quite have feeling anymore.

No, right now it’s summer and it’s warm enough that he can spend most of his time in the woods and never see another soul.

His shoes are old, but they were sturdy when he bought them, so the rubber is peeling away at the edges of his soles but the glue’s not defeated yet. The gravel of the trail crunches and shifts under his feet. The sound is kind of like distant thunder, and it quiets all the wood sounds. He wouldn’t mind if it rained some today. Doesn’t smell right, though. Probably won’t.

Castiel walks a little deeper inward. There’ll probably be some people out on the trails today, looking to get some sunshine and nice weather in them before fall comes. It’s late August now, but fall and winter follow hot on the tails and everyone from around here knows what the Illinois winters are like, knows about April snows.

He turns off the trail to crash through the woods a little bit. He’s more quiet than other people, but he’s not as quiet as the deer that live here or the other animals. Castiel likes the animals. They’re so patient with him.

Take the bees in the dead tree right at the edge of the wood, right where it goes from being public to private property. Castiel can hear them. They let him. They talk, all thousands and thousands of them, in one soft voice. Say soft things to him, like how to find the best flowers and draw their nectar. How to find the weak ones for when winter comes and the hive can’t support them. How to find a new queen. How to work for a greater good. They think of him as some wayward visitor, some inept bee that they must teach. Not an invader, not an outsider. A friend.

Castiel likes to sit and listen to them under the hot August sun.

* * *

Dean drives until the sun sets, and then he drives more. He drives as the clouds drift by and the moon rises, drives as the stars shift and disappear back into the sky. Dean drives until the sun comes back up and he runs low on gas.

He exits at some po-dunk gas station. Takes a piss and grabs a cup of coffee. It’s warm and rich in his mouth, early enough in the day that it hasn't become burnt and metallic. He drinks as he fills up the tank, numbers clicking by digitally on the pump.

It's about seven in the morning. Dean's been driving for about twenty hours.

He's been awake longer.

He's throwing out some of the detritus in the car, tossing his jacket in the trunk of the car,  when he hears another car pull up to the pump next to his.

Bunch of college kids, probably a few years younger than him. All blonde hair and suntans and t-shirts and shorts. They talk, they make jokes as some of them head in for coffee and another stays to fill up the pump.

He’s wearing a shirt that reads STANFORD in large, white letters.

Dean's mind drifts back to his brother.

He hasn't seen him since Sam was seventeen, red-faced and angry. Straining against his rage at their father.

"If you're going," John had said, "don't come back."

And Sam hadn't.

"Dude," fratboy calls, "can I help you?"

Dean snaps out of it.

"Sorry," he answers, smiling as warmly as he can. Far enough east that he can get away with affecting a little, doing it for show. "You remind of someone I used to know."

Fratboy nods.

"What are you doing this far east?" He asks. "You're on the wrong coast."

"Internship," fratboy answers. "Gallery in New York."

Dean nods. Pulls the nozzle out of the pump. Swipes a card he took from his dad's wallet (definitely fake) and smiles again. "Great talkin' to you," he says. "Safe travels."

He drives on.

* * *

Castiel walks east, magnetically.

Sometimes he gets a feeling that he should be somewhere, somewhere specific. Sometimes it's a voice (his brother's voice, high pitched and plaintive, begging for him to come back). Sometimes it's a sensation, deep in his navel, pulling him forward. Sometimes it's a jolt like an electric fence, telling him to stop, wait, it’s almost right.

This is something different, though. This is like the way thread goes through cloth when guided by a needle. This is the way grass pierces through dirt to grow. The way light falls across a window. He's never felt this before and it's important.

He heads east, along a highway, little unsteady on his feet. He's hungry, but he's used to that. He’s tired, but this comes first. If he wants anything, he wants a good cup of tea.

He misses tea.

He misses sitting with a warm mug of it in his hands and feeling the warmth of it leach out into his fingers. He misses the smell of it in his nose, the warm weight of it in his stomach. He misses guessing what the leaves at the bottom might mean.

He misses it, but not enough to go back.

Nothing’s enough to go back.

He didn't realize how crazy everyone made him until he left them all. He didn't realize how unhappy he was, how uncomfortable.

Castiel doesn't like talking to people. At all. They're always hiding something, and they don’t like that he can see it. He can't help it. He doesn’t even look, but it’s obvious, and then, well, it’s interesting.

Sometimes it’s ugly and wrong, twisted up inside of them, growing around their organs.

If it's not ugliness, it's scars.

Nature doesn't hide either of them. Animals don't. Trees don't. Woods don't. A forest fire is written as easily and obviously as a carcass filled with blackness and maggots and roiling bacteria.

Migratory, he realizes. The sensation is migratory, and it's pulling him east along this highway.

* * *

Dean heads south, towards Ohio, and he manages to hit the wavering, shimmering edge of a heat wave.

"Shit," he murmurs, rolling the windows down and turning off the AC. It's about ten in the afternoon, and if he wants it to work by about two when it's at its worst he needs to let the thing rest. The shivering, shimmering rolls of heat have just begun to levitate off of the black asphalt, surrounding the shape of the roadsigns, the cars, the woods.

He knew it would be bad this morning when he woke up and the air conditioning the hotel room in Pennsylvania sputtered dead. He's wearing jeans and a t-shirt, but it's so damn hot that sweat has slicked it secure to his back.

He shrugs out of it after about an hour on the road. Turns the radio up a little louder. Takes a long drink of warm bottled water.

At about one, he stops at some tiny po-dunk diner to grab lunch, tugging his shirt back on.

He looks at a map, just to confirm what he already knows. He's pushing up against the Western edge of the state, right in the middle of nowhere. Now that he's up out of that Northeasternmost corner, he can make real progress heading Southwest, toward California.

The waitress brings him a huge glass of ice water, and Dean smiles at her. "God bless you, ma'am," he says. "Old cars, you know?"

She smiles back at him. "Look, all I know is that pretty boys like you keep coming in and passing out on the counter, okay? Hate to have to peel you up off of that counter."

She has red hair, lots of it, tied up in a ponytail. Cute smile. Little apron tied around her hips.

"I dunno," Dean says, "I could think of worse fates than being nursed by a pretty girl like you."

She laughs, pulling her notebook out of her pocket. "Nah," he answers. "They keep me around to nurse the pretty girls what get sick."

She has a little namebadge settled on her chest. Reads, "CHARLIE" in bright, white letters.

Dean orders a burger and thick slice of pie. Milkshake, too.

Food on the boat, it was never as good as this. Nothing on this menu came out of a can or was made six hours ago. It's all hot and bright and fresh. The milkshake is rich and cold, cools him right down.

Dean pays in cash and leaves a pretty sizeable tip.

He drives on, barechested.

A storm gathers ahead of him.

* * *

The sky breaks somewhere over the border from Illinois into Ohio. It stops being that angry, bruised purpled color and instead it bursts open into drops that fall almost vengefully out. They pummel the asphalt, bouncing back on impact.

It's kind of nice actually, if a little dangerous.

The thing is, it's not like this part of the road is particularly busy, which is good. And it's better than the heat, too. It does make visibility just about nonexistent, though.

Castiel walks on though, straight. He knows it's straight. He can feel it, from the curve on the margin under his feet to that other thing. That other thing he can feel weirdly.

His hair sticks to his face and his coat hangs limply around his body. It's all soaking, drenched through.

Castiel blinks the water out of his eyes as he walks on.

Headlights blur up the highway, streak by leaving an enormous splash in its wake.

Castiel rolls his eyes. It's not their fault, really. They're going the speed limit, they can't know he's there.

Castiel walks on, and the tail lights burn like Mars at night.

Castiel walks, barefoot. The water splashes between his toes. It beats on his shoulders.

The car pulls to the side of the road.

Castiel walks on.

The car is long and dark.

A window rolls down.

"Dude," the driver says, "you okay out here?"

Castiel's been struck by lightning before, but this sensation is a close second.

It is like the magnetic sensation, it is like this car, this man is the pole. This man is the center, the beginning, the end all be all.

Castiel looks at him.

He has tanned skin, dotted with freckles. Dark hair bleached by the sun.

Green eyes. Green eyes like a field of grass after the sun has risen and the dew still hangs heavily on the blades.

"Dude," the guy says, "get in the car. Let me get you somewhere dry."

* * *

The bottom falls out but Dean drives on. He doesn't mind that much, really. It's hard to drive but he's been through worse. And at least the rain cools everything down. It clears out the pollen and shit in the air, too, even if the humidity is going to be a bitch and a half.

It's been doing this for maybe forty five minutes when Dean drives by the guy.

He doesn't think he's seen him at first. Some sort of ghost or something, a trick of his eye.

Dean slows and looks in the rear-view.

No, no, there's someone out there in the rain.

Dean pulls to the shoulder.

The guy shuffles through the rain to the side of the car. Dean leans over and rolls down the window."Dude, get in the car," Dean says, trying to sound friendly and not like some sort of serial killer. "Let me get you somewhere dry, okay?"

The guy is soaked to the goddamn bone but he doesn't move. Doesn't climb into the car or say anything at all. He turns his head slowly, from one side to the other and looks at Dean like snakes have just leapt out of his mouth.

"Hey," Dean says, "hey you okay? Hablo ingles? Parle anglais?"

The rain beats down on the guy. Thunder rumbles up above.

The guy blinks a couple of times and nods.

He opens the door. He steps inside.

He has dark hair that has been plastered to his head by the weather, skin that has been deeply tanned by a lot of time outside. His clothes don't look like they're in great shape either, but that could just be how wet they are more than anything.

The guy looks at Dean again, intently. Brow furrowed.

"Are you okay?" Dean asks.

He nods, slowly.

Dean nods in response. "Alright, good," he says. "You uh, you headed somewhere specifically?"

The guy's expression changes ever so slightly.

His eyes are a shade of blue Dean has never seen on a person, and it startles him. It reminds him of the time there was a bad switch in a hotel room and the shock laid him out for a good four hours. It’s a color like light running through a piece of blue glass just the right way or the strange, deep color of pure clear water in a fresh lake.

Something about that color is strange. Otherworldly.

"Elsewhere," the guy says in a deep voice.

Thunder rolls once again.

Dean nods again. He shoves his key into the ignition. He drives off.

The guys doesn't say anything for a long time, anything at all, actually. He just stares out of the windshield at the road ahead of them.

"West again," he says. His voice is low and heavy. It makes Dean think of nothing so much as a funerary dirge.

Dean glances over at him. "Did you...are you from out west?" He asks.

The guys shakes his head. "Not really," he answers. "Nowhere special. Pontiac."

"Do you uh, do you have a name?" he asks.

The stranger, this dripping stranger, he turns and looks at Dean again. "Castiel," he answers.

"Dean," he replies.

The stranger looks at Dean again, this same strange intensity. Vivid and unsettling.

Dean grips the steering wheel and settles in his seat. The windshield wipers beat a steady rhythm against the glass. The rain is like a constant rattle, battering and sputtering.

"You going anywhere more specific than 'Elsewhere?'" Dean asks.

This guy, Castiel, he looks at Dean for a few seconds more. He looks at his hands and his arms. At his chest, which Dean is increasingly realizing is still bare after the heat before the storm.

"California," he answers. "Norcal."

Dean glances back over at this guy. He's still dripping. Looks like a drowned rat. "Me too," he says. "Stanford."

The stranger nods. Almost knowingly.

"So uh," Dean says, trying desperately to break the strangeness here. "Do you like Zeppelin?"

* * *

Castiel can read Dean like an open book.

He can usually read people pretty well, actually. Something about them. Like a color. Dean though, Dean has words.

Castiel tells him he's going to California, even though he didn't know where he was going until he got in this car. And now he's so certain. He's positive, tight like a drawn cord.

"1967 Chevrolet Impala," Castiel says, reading the name of the car in the shape of Dean's mind.

Dean smiles. "You a gearhead?" he asks.

Castiel shakes his head. "No," he answers. "I don't know anything about cars at all."

Dean shifts in his seat again. He's uncomfortable. Not physically, just emotionally. Socially. Castiel is making him uncomfortable. He does that to a lot of people.

"Well, what do you know about?" he asks.

Castiel looks at him. Dean is not wearing a shirt. The air conditioner is on, just enough that Castiel is growing cool under his wet clothes.

"Bees," Castiel answers. He knows a few things about bees, but not many. "And early occultism." He knows a few things about that, too.

Dean glances over at him. He looks roguish. "Bees and early occultism, eh? Pretty varied interests. What led to that?"

"I like bees," he says. "They're orderly. They see their universe as a series of decisions to lead to a greater good. They are quite noble, in their way. It is a strange kindness." He pauses a moment. "In colder climes bees exile the male drones from the hive in winter, to prevent them from being a drain on resources. They remove their wings and legs, to prevent them from returning. They don't mind, though. They know that the hive is more important. The hive is everything."

Dean frowns. "Okay," he answers, slowly. "You talk to bees?"

Castiel shrugs. "It's not much like talking, really. It's more like...they sing and I hear them. I couldn't ask them my own questions." He pauses, reading Dean's question before he asks it. "I'm not insane," he says, a little more sharply than he means. "I'm not."

"I uh, I didn't say you were," Dean says back. "I wasn't going to, either."

"I'm...sensitive," Castiel says. "Sorry. You don't know about my..." he pauses, looking for the word that Gabriel used. "You don't have my damage. I shouldn't assume."

"I take it that uh, lot of people like to say you are," Dean murmurs.

Castiel looks at the leather of the seat. "I'm sorry I'm dripping," he answers. "This is a good car. You clearly love it and the water can't be good for it."

Dean shrugs. He runs his hands through his hair again, his gesture for discomfort, for thought.  "I loved it a lot more when I was younger," he says. "It's a good car but it's- it's a tool. And if it doesn't serve people, what's it for, eh?"

"It's a kind argument," Castiel answers. "We both know it isn't true, though."

Dean freezes and looks at him, like maybe Castiel is a puzzle he doesn't quite understand. "You uh...you know a lot of people with cars?" he asks. "You sound like you have experience."

"You're not hard to read," he answers.

Dean smirks slightly and looks out on the road, like a smear of oil before the car. The windshield wipers are like a heartbeat, steady, two stroke.

"So early occultism?" Dean asks.

"Yes," Castiel answers.

There is a long pause. Dean shifts in his seat again. Goosebumps crawl over his bare skin.

"Why...early occultism?" He asks.

"Anything after the eighteenth century was just masturbation," he answers, to which Dean snorts, thoroughly undignified and free.

"Do you think it's, I dunno...real?" he asks.

Castiel shrugs. "As real as anything else anyone believes," he replies. "There are things I cannot explain. Sometimes, what would be called early occultism explains them."

Dean nods. Shivers again.

"Why are you headed to California?" He asks.

"I can feel that it is where I am meant to be," Castiel answers. This is the truth, even if it is one he has only realized in less than the past ten minutes.

Dean seems to process this for a moment. "How about this," he says, "we're headed to the same place. I'm not much looking to do the whole thing alone, and you look like you can't really afford a bus ticket. You don't stab me in my sleep and I'll take you the whole way there, alright?"

Castiel feels himself smile. "That would be ideal. Thank you, Dean."

* * *

The guy falls asleep in the car after two hours of quiet, weird conversation. Dean drives on, though. If this heat keeps up, he'd rather sleep through the day and drive through the night. He'll use less gas.

Dean wouldn’t even think that the guy was asleep, honestly, if he hadn’t said his name and not gotten a response. He’s sitting up straight in the seat, his head resting back onto the headrest and his eyes closed.

Early Occultism, Dean thinks. And Bees.

“Man, what the hell,” he murmurs softly.

Castiel opens his eyes suddenly, inhaling a deep breath like he is suddenly startled. Like he doesn’t know where he is.

“Whoah, man,” Dean says. “Hey, it’s okay! You’re in the car with the creepy guy who picked you up, remember? Going to Norcal?”

He starts snapping his fingers, over and over again, breathing very,very quickly and then slowing his breath into deep,even breaths.

He looks up at the ceiling of the car, gasping like a fish, and then he stops. Sounds almost normal. He keeps looking up and he says, “You’re very loud. I had forgotten.”

“What?” Dean asks.

Castiel rolls his neck over and looks at him. “I’m not insane,” he repeats.

“Dude,” Dean replies, “if you keep saying that shit completely unprompted-”

“I’m not,” he interrupts. “Okay? I just-” He sighs, heavily. “I can’t explain it, okay? Not really, not with words you would understand.” He puts his hand on his thigh and shakes against it, his fingers rattling on the fabric. “It’s like..,people are surrounded by this fog that lets their thoughts out but doesn’t let other people’s through. And mine is thin, okay?”

Dean looks at Castiel, adjusting himself in his seat. “And I’m loud,” he says.

Castiel huffs out a breath like a laugh. “Yes,” he answers.

Dean looks out on the highway, a ribbon of darkness illuminated before the car. The sky is a lighter shade of darkness, a rich dioxazine purple saturated deep all the way into black, peppered with bright stars like Christmas lights. The highway is flanked by trees, dark and close shapes.

“I don’t think you’re insane,” Dean says.

You have no idea how insane I don’t think you are, he thinks.

“I just...my…,” he pauses, “my ‘people skills’ are ‘rusty.’” His air quotes are so loud Dean can hear them out of the corner of his eye, and he barks an unexpected laugh.

"Sorry, man, I'm not makin' fun of you or anything, just...the air quotes," he chuckles. "They're pretty uh...sorry. I guess my people skills aren't really in practice either."

Castiel looks at him and squints. "Why?" he asks.

Dean looks back to the road, sees an exit approaching. "Spent the last few years on a fishing boat," he answers. "You see the same fifteen guys, day in, day out, you forget some of that stuff. Not hard to do."

Castiel nods sagely in the passenger seat.

"Let me pull to a hotel," he says. "A night's rest would probably do both of us a world of good and I've slept in that seat. She's comfortable but not that comfortable."

Castiel nods again and sits up a little straighter in the seat.

Dean notices suddenly, the way his clothes have dried from the rainwater and the air conditioning, heavily wrinkled. He looks clean but rain-clean, like he probably hasn't showered in a while.

"Are you uh...are you usually on the road?" Dean asks.

Castiel shrugs. "I like to be," he answers.

Dean yawns and nods.

They're quiet until they pull at the next exit toward a weird little motel in a tiny po-dunk town. Dean parks in front of a room and walks to the office. "You wanna join?" he asks, but Castiel shakes his head, pinching the bridge of his nose.

"I'll be out here," he answers, his deep voice murmuring.

Dean walks to the front desk and hits the bell, once, twice, and waits.

He can hear a television playing deeper into the building, which doesn't surprise him. Neither does the golden quality of the low lights or the old wall paper that would have been in vogue in the seventies. The ancient desktop computer, the older registry book, the primordial board of keys hanging up.

A curtain parts behind the desk and a young guy with tired but happy eyes and short-cut hair comes to the desk. He wears a nametag that reads ALFIE in all caps.

"Hey," Dean says. "How much for a night?"

"Forty five," Alfie answers. "Be out by two in the afternoon."

Dean fills out paperwork, in his real name, and gets keys for a two bed room at the far corner of the complex, pretty quiet. No neighbors, either.

Castiel is quiet when Dean climbs into the car and drives over to their room.

He tosses him the key. "Open her up while I grab my bag, okay?" he asks.

Castiel nods and steps out of the car and Dean heads to the trunk.

Standing in the room, the lights on, Dean notices for the first time that the guy doesn't have a bag. No backpack, no satchel, nothing- just the clothes on his back.

"Go hit the shower, dude," Dean says. "I take mine in the morning."

Castiel doesn’t move though, just stands there like he’s receiving a message from the mothership or something, like he’s a computer that’s processing data.

His back is completely straight and his gaze is unfocused but hard, his mouth parts softly for a moment and his expression crumples, ever so slightly.

He inhales sharply and blinks, as suddenly as he stopped being so present and says, "I need to shower for a long time."

Dean nods. "Yeah, okay," he says. He sets his bag on the bed next to the door and gestures to the bathroom.

Castiel walks to it and shuts the door.

The hotel room is painted in shades of bile yellow and dirty brown, waving wallpaper forming a psychotropic pattern that would have been in vogue in the sixties. It’s not surprising that this place was so cheap, given the flickering lamps and the blankets made of what feels like raw, knotted polyester.

Dean eases down on the bed and tugs off his boots. He lays back and groans as his back stretches, the vertebrae pulling slowly into a relaxed position. The mattress is lumpy- maybe it’s older than he is- but he’s laying, instead of sitting upright.

Castiel is still showering when Dean falls asleep, forty five minutes later.

* * *

In here, in the cold, memory-less tile, Castiel cannot feel the rest of the people in the motel, and he can barely feel the previous occupants. With the tap on, he can pretend he's still in the rain.

The water is warm. The small soaps are fragrant and make rich, heavy lather. It's nice to pull the twigs and leaves of the woods out of his hair, to scratch the occasional flea or tick away from his scalp. Showers are nice, one of the nice things about coming out of the woods.

He's not sure if it's worth it or not, though.

He runs his hands over his chest, feels the raised and branching scar over his heart. Under his fingertips, it feels like the roots of a tree that drives through him and buries him to the earth.

He closes his eyes for a long moment and then shuts off the tap. He wraps a hotel towel around his waist and steps out.

On the bed closest to the bathroom, there is an old t-shirt and a pair of worn sweatpants, folded.

Dean snores in the far bed, his dreams peeling off of him in soft waves of hushed breath and muted blues and blacks.

Castiel looks at him.

He puts on the clothes, turns out the light, and focuses on Dean's breathing until he feels his own sleep come over him.

* * *

When Dean wakes up in the morning, Castiel isn't there.

There's a wet towel on the floor and a pile of ancient, and fragrant clothes on the bathroom floor.

The clothes Dean laid out last night are gone, but his wallet and keys are still there.

He looks puzzled at the bed.

He didn't hear him get up or leave. Sleeping through the night, hard, is a skill he learned on the boat.

If the clothes weren't there, if the sheets weren't wrinkled, if the towel wasn't wet, he would think he has just hallucinated him.

He stretches, his joints popping, and heads to the bathroom.

When he gets out of the shower, Castiel is back with a small paper bag and two cups.

"I had a little bit of change," he murmurs quietly. "I thought maybe you would appreciate breakfast, after...you picked me up."

Dean smiles at him. "What are we looking at here?" He asks, tugging on a pair of boxers.

"Blueberry muffins," he answers. "The berries are grown just down the road on a Mennonite farm- I heard from a local hive that they should be quite sweet."

He's still wearing the clothes from last night- an old AC/DC shirt and sweatpants with a hole worn through the knee and those old as hell tennis shoes.

"Oh, and a coffee for you- black, no sugars," he says, handing him a cup and a large muffin out of the bag.

"Wow," Dean says. "Thanks."

He extricates a muffin from the wrapper and takes a bite and Castiel takes a sip from his own cup. He closes his eyes deeply, happily. He hums a low, deep sigh of pleasure and says, "I miss tea."

His hands curl around the cardboard cup like the hot liquid inside is a treasure, even though it's barely break of eight o'clock at the heat is already setting in.

“Probably could have gotten it iced this part of the country,” Dean answers. “With enough sugar to stand a spoon in.”

Castiel wrinkles his nose and sticks out his tongue.

Dean laughs.

They've both probably slept about five hours, but Dean doesn't usually sleep more than about four and a half and Castiel clearly isn't complaining for lack of sleep.

They eat in personable quiet, and then Dean gathers his things and they hit the road again.

Castiel doesn't change and Dean doesn't ask him to- he does make a mental note to visit a laundromat the next next town they stop in, though.

Thirty minutes after he finishes his tea, Castiel drifts back asleep.

Dean drives through the noon, over fields and lakes, and at around three in the afternoon, Castiel wakes up suddenly, his blue eyes swimming wildly around in his head.

He grinds the palms of his hands into his eyes for a moment and says, "I had a dream."

Dean raises an eyebrow. "Clowns or-"

"I was made of light and sound," he interrupts. "Inasmuch that light and sound could be the same thing, transmissible as some kind of wavelength."

Dean looks back at the road, but he cannot stop himself from memorizing the way Castiel looks as he tries to phrase this- tries to think through being a-

"Light and sound?" Dean asks. "That uh...that sounds pretty intense."

Castiel nods. "I don't get it as often as I used to," he answers, his voice muffled around his hands.

"So this is recurrent?" Dean asks.

Castiel nods.

He doesn't say it, but it's an understood statement between them.

I'm not insane.

“Are you a particular color?” Dean asks. “Or a particular sound?”

Castiel looks at him from over the top of his fingers.

“All of them,” he answers.

Dean nods. “Damn,” he says.

“Yes,” Castiel replies.

They drive in silence for a few minutes before Dean asks, “Can I turn on the radio? Would that bug you?”

Castiel shakes his head. “Please don't turn it up too loud,” he mutters.

Dean smirks as he flicks the volume knob on and presses play on the tape deck. “Wouldn't dream of it,” he says.

AC/DC shrieks dimly and Castiel frowns at the stereo.

“A tape deck?” He asks, quizzically.

Dean nods. “None of that mp3 shit in my baby,” he answers. It's less his objection, really, and more John's. But that's not Castiel's damage, that's his.

“But the sound quality on cassettes decreases significantly as they are played,” he says, seriously. The statement is fairly obscure but it's said with that same gravity that accompanies everything Castiel says. “And surely given the ubiquitous advent of mp3 technology you have not insignificant difficulty finding new tapes- especially given that their popularity was unseated by compact disks nearly twenty years ago.”

“Early occultism, bees, and audio technology,” Dean says. “You have three interests, dude. No one bitches this much about my old car and her quirks without something being a hobby.”

And Castiel grins such that his eyes crinkle and his head tilts backward slightly and he laughs, down in his chest.

“So,” Dean says, “now that I know that fucking music is one of your damn hobbies, anyone in particular you like?”

Castiel looks thoughtfully out over the dashboard. “I don’t know,” he says softly. “I’ve never listened to something with intent.” He scratches his arm absently and adds, “I’ve never really thought about music.”

Dean nods, his head moving back and forth. He glances over at Castiel and comments, “So less a music nerd and more an AV guy?”

“I suppose,” he murmurs.

He looks a little frantic, frenetic in his seat. His hands and fingers shake, ghosting up and down his arms, thumping against the dash and his skin. He licks his lips and rolls his head, over his shoulders.

“You okay?” Dean asks.

Castiel nods. “I have tics,” he answers. “Not like the parasite- the um, the brain thing. I’m okay, I just feel like I’m buzzing.”

“Like a bee,” Dean smirks.

And Castiel laughs again.

And Dean turns the volume up a little bit and they tear down the highway.

* * *

It’s about five that evening when Dean says, “Hey, you hungry?”

He knows Castiel is hungry, he heard his stomach growl about thirty minutes ago and other than the muffin this morning, neither of them have had anything to eat today.

He shakes his head. “I’m fine,” he says.

The AC/DC ran out a while back and now they’re meandering through an old mix made of The Doors and David Bowie. The volume knob bounces up and down.

“You sure?” he asks. “I’m buying and I’ll be honest, I should probably eat something. Starting to feel like I’m gonna puke I’m so hungry.”

Castiel shakes his head again. “I really shouldn’t,” he murmurs. “I have a little money but if it’s going to last, I really shouldn’t eat again today, I got the tea and-”  
“Dude,” Dean interrupts, “I can take care of it. I’m not gonna let you sit there and be hungry.”  
“I don’t want to impose on you,” he murmurs. “You already paid for a hotel room-”  
Dean holds up his hand. “If I were in your situation, you’d do the same for me.”

* * *

The diner is crowded. Very crowded.

It is packed firm with bright noise- the sound of protein and oil hitting a hot grill, the sound of a fryer, the sound of waitresses, the sound of people talking at tables, the people laughing and reading and eating.

He takes a long, steadying breath and steps into the diner next to Dean, who instantly seems like he’s at home.

There’s a swagger to him as he strides inside. He gives the passing waitress a bright smile, he slides cooly into a booth, he grabs a menu.

“I can tell you,” he says, “that any kind of salad you might get here will be made entirely out of iceberg lettuce and refrigerated tomatoes. Might do you better to order the mac and cheese and the glazed carrots.”

Castiel looks at him and frowns. Dean is engrossed in the menu. “I am not a vegetarian, Dean,” he says.

Dean looks up at him and says, “Sorry- don’t know why I thought-”  
“The human race was evolved to eat a varied diet of animal proteins, grains, and vegetable matter, and although I am told that many of the animal proteins can be substituted for soy or legume options, they are usually significantly more expensive than the meat option,” he says. “At this point in my life it is simply easier to eat omnivorously, although I do quite enjoy burgers and also bacon.”

“Early occultism, bees, audio technology, and nutrition,” Dean lists. “You’re getting more hobbies by the minute.”

His green eyes glitter slightly with his humor, and it makes Castiel feel warm, like he fell asleep under the sun. It’s nice.

In this vinyl booth in the middle of the country, Castiel suddenly feels at home as Dean does. It’s a little foreign, this feeling.

The roots inside of him have to travel a long way to reach the soil, a little further to reach the dark soil full of deep, dark strangeness and earthly power, but they go there. He’s not adrift, suddenly. He feels real.

The waitress brings them two huge burgers and a tall glass of water, and Castiel realizes he doesn’t remember ordering.

Dean smiles at him and takes a bite of his burger.

* * *

They're edging slowly, ever so slowly, through Nebraska, when Castiel feels it.

“Turn here,” he says. “This exit, take this one.”

Dean looks at him. “What?” He asks.

“Take this exit,” he repeats.

“Why?” he asks. They’ve only been traveling together for two days now- Dean can’t be expected to understand, especially because Castiel hasn’t told him.

Castiel looks for the way to explain it to him, but he can only settle on, “Reasons.”

Dean takes the exit.

They follow the road for a few minutes and then Castiel says, “Turn left.”

Dean turns left onto a thin, gravel road. He looks intently at the direction, but he's not asking any more questions. They follow it for a long time, until Castiel suddenly says, “Stop!”

And they do.

He climbs out of the car, eagerly. Suddenly.

He's shivering with the feeling of it, like no part of him can quit moving. He feels like a dowsing rod, drawn tight to a sensation leading him through a wood.

It's hot, and sweat drips down his back and face. The woods are almost completely silent, the not-quite-distant roar of the highway driving away what hives and nests and flocks might have elected to live here. The trees wear bare bark- no lichen or moss for lack of water and abundance of pollution. No mushrooms- no forest fires to stoke their mycelium to fruit, no death to feed them. It is a plastic forest, held in a four season stasis without change or alteration. No destruction to herald new birth. It is unearthly.

It's silent until suddenly, Castiel crosses something, some kind of invisible threshold and he feels the sound and life roar back into the earth.

He gasps aloud and falls to his knees.

It is at once loud and silent, blissfully, totally soundless.

Birds flutter through the air. Bees hang heavy on the air.

And a stag, antler broad and nut brown, stands barely twenty feet away from him and gazes at him- regards him.

There's no sound between them, but there is a taught understanding of sameness.

A woman in green- a woman of green, stands beside the stag. Flowers and vines through her hair. Moss on her skin.

“Branching man,” she says.

And Castiel nods.

Castiel feels Dean behind him, but he cannot break his gaze from the Green Lady and the Stag.

“Hunter,” she says.

Her eyes are the color new clover.

She looks at Dean, and Castiel manages to turn to look at him for the barest moment.

Dean is aiming a gun, pearl grip, at the Green Lady. His face is schooled and hard. Everything about him is intent and grim.

“We are not the monsters of your youth,” she says. “We are not what you seek to harm.”

Dean says nothing.

Her gaze settles back to Castiel. “We are sorry you have been so damaged, Branching Man,” she says. Her voice sounds like the falling of blossoms from trees. “We are sad we cannot render you healed. What has been rent can rarely be re-forged.”

Castiel feels himself shaking his head, slowly. “Please,” he says. “Claire.”

The Stag's head bows slowly.

“She is strong,” the Green Lady says.

The wind blows, and as suddenly as they were there in this live glade, they are gone.

Sound disappears and roars back, and Castiel finds himself clawing at his ears to block the roar and rumble of it all. He feels hands moving him up brusquely and he feels himself stumbled back through the screaming world into the car.

* * *

The woman with the deer disappears all of the sudden, and then Castiel is having some kind of goddamn fit, there on ground. He's scraping, tearing at his ears and he's screaming at the top of his damn lungs and Dean is just trying to get him out of there.

He drags him the half mile back to the car and slams him into the passenger seat and tears ass the highway. By the time he's scorching through asphalt, Castiel's stopped.

He looks comatose for a moment, and then- then he's out.

He looks pale and fragile. Dean's clothes are too big on him and they're worn a little bit- they hang off of his shoulders a little bit. His mouth hangs slack.

Claire, Dean remembers. Who the fuck is Claire?

He keeps driving.

He doesn't know what to do but put as much distance between Cas and that place.

“Should have ganked it,” he mutters. “Should have put a bullet in that god-damn-thing.” He punctuates the words with sharp hits on his steering wheel.

He grinds his teeth. He hears his father’s voice in the back of his head, his low growl telling him that if it’s not human, it can’t be trusted.

The thing couldn’t be trusted.

“Couldn’t be trusted,” he says. “Doesn’t matter.”

Doesn’t matter what that thing knew about him.

“Fuck,” he growls.

* * *

When Castiel opens his eyes, the moon greets him.

He blinks at it a few times and sits up, in the car. In Dean's car.

“Hey there, Sleeping Beauty,” Dean says. His voice sounds jovial but Castiel can feel the sharp undercurrent of intense worry centered to it.

“Nebraska,” Castiel answers. “We're still in Nebraska.”

“Yeah,” Dean answers. “It's a wide goddamn state. Seriously. I think we're gonna stop for the night at the border, yeah?”

Castiel yawns and nods.

There's a pause.

“Dude,” Dean says. “What- what happened back there?”

“It's complicated,” Castiel says.

“Yeah, no shit,” Dean answers. “That's not really an answer, man.”

Castiel throws his hand up. “The world is weird, okay? Early occultism- there's...there's thing we can't explain and it's just there and there's nothing you can really do about.”

Dean raises a hand and thumps on the steering wheel. “I get that, Cas, that's not really the part I'm freaking out about, okay? What were those things? What did those things want with you?”

Dean's voice isn't loud but Castiel can feel the sharpness inside of it.

* * *

Castiel still looks pale, and even though Dean has seen him sleep for nearly six hours of today he looks like a man who hasn't slept in months.

He looks wounded.

Dean looks at him and says, “What did those things do to you?”

“I'm not insane,” Castiel whispers.

Dean runs his hands through his hair and sighs. He pulls off at the next exit, to the first motel.

“Do us both good to sleep in a bed,” Dean murmurs.

“No,” Castiel says. “No, I can sleep here. It’s fine.”

There is something rushed and worried to his voice and Dean looks over at him, illuminated by the parking lot light. “Dude, I should sleep too and most rooms come with two beds; I’ll be honest with you, it’s not all altruism on my part, okay?” Dean says.

“No,” Castiel continues, “I really cannot. Should not.”

Castiel huffs out a sudden sigh. “I can’t stay there,” he practically growls.

Dean looks over at him and frowns and then it hits him-

“It’s too loud,” he sighs.

And Castiel looks like he wants to burrow deep into the door and never be seen again. “I’m sorry,” he rumbles.

Dean shrugs. “No,” he says. “I get it. I mean- I don’t get it but I get that you want to be comfortable. That you deserve to be comfortable.”

Castiel’s eyes rest on the dashboard, in a neutral position. “I am a stranger to you,” he murmurs.

“Then fucking tell me about you,” Dean cries. “Who are you? Where are you from? Do you have family?”

And Castiel's face twists. Like he's been burned.

Dean rubs a hand over his face. “Look,” he says. “I'm Dean Winchester. Born to Mary and John Winchester. I've got a brother. My dad died and I'm driving out to tell him. I had a really...really fucked up childhood, okay? And I don't think you're crazy, alright?”

He bites his lips. He grits his teeth.

“Something weird killed my mom. And I grew up on the road, looking for the things that kill...people's moms. And it was shitty and dangerous and my dad was- he was fucked up by it. And I was fucked up by it and my brother was fucked up by it and we're- we're fucked up inside by it. And the world is inexplicable and weird and fucked up. It's fucking- it's fucked.”

He sighs. “I don’t...blame you for those things back there but...Cas, what were they? Because I don’t know what that was. What those were.”

Castiel looks over at him.

And he pulls off the shirt.

A delicate, lacelike scar settle from the top of his shoulder over his chest, forking and branching and peeling off. Like a delicate fretwork of coral or a web of lace or the roots of a tree.

Branching man, Dean realizes.

“James Novak was struck by lightning four years ago,” Castiel says. “On the way home from church, he stopped in the sidewalk to pick up a penny and it shot down from the heavens and struck him. He had a wife and a daughter.”

His own hand settles over the scar, wanders absently over it. “She was very bright, Claire. Very kind.”

His voice is low and steady.

“I don't- I don't remember being Jimmy Novak. I don't remember my wife, I barely remember my daughter. Don't remember my brother or being a tax accountant or going to church or what colors I liked or what my favorite animal was.” He looks at Dean, blue eyes mournful and pained. “Jimmy Novak got struck by lightning, and when he woke up six hours later, I was there.”

He pulls the shirt back on. “Gabriel and my wife, they had me in and out of hospitals but they're so...they're louder than most places and they didn't make the shaking go away or the dream or the blackouts, they just made them worse.” He pauses. “When you picked me up, I'd been two weeks out of a place in Minnesota.”

There's a long, quiet moment between them.

“I don't want to go back,” he says. “I don't want the drugs or the therapist trying to rationalize it all away or something. I was happy in the woods, with the bees. I mean, I missed tea and beds but it was quiet. And sometimes I felt things and I went there and it was okay. And when I met you on the road, I knew that I had to be where you went. That where you took this car, that was where I was supposed to wind up, too. I had a direction and a name and everything.”

He hugs himself, hands settled over his arms. “Bees are orderly. They live in a world of completely randomized chaos, subject to the whims of its carelessness and cruelty and they make it all make sense. They don't have answers and they don't want them. They're content because as long as there's the hive and the queen and the cells of honey, the universe can make sense to them.”

“It doesn't make sense,” he says, finally. “Nothing makes any sense and- and when I got in the car, I had enough information to make it make as much sense as I needed.”

He licks his lips and says, “I think she was a nymph and that was her steed. But I’m not positive. I don’t see them and those like them all that often, to be honest. Sometimes it’s Green Ladies and sometimes it’s the wolves-”

“Wolves?” Dean blurts. “Like werewolves?”

And Castiel huffs gently. “I don’t know, you idiot,” he answers.

And Dean snorts a brief laugh.

“I feel like I’m supposed to be with you,” Castiel murmurs. “And sometimes, I guess, I just feel these kind of things. I feel them all the time and they send me places. And the feeling is just so strong.”

Dean looks at Castiel, who looks like he’s been pulled bare to the bones of himself. He looks like a bud pulling itself out of soil.

“Where can you sleep?” Dean asks.

“Outside, usually,” Castiel answers. “Or at the hospitals, they would sedate me. But that’s not really sleeping.”

“So the past couple days,” Dean says, “you’ve been sleeping in the car because the hotels haven’t been good.”

And Castiel shrugs a little.

“I’m worried if you slept outside that you might get hurt or eaten or something,” Dean says softly.

And it starts raining, suddenly.

* * *

The rain bubbles out of the sky suddenly and hits the car heavily.

There’s not thunder, there’s not lightning, there’s just rain.

There doesn’t tend to be thunder or lightning near him ever since it happened, just pure rain.

Dean gestures out of the door. “You can’t sleep out there, in this,” he says. He looks tired. He sounds tired. But he also sounds honest. Like he sincerely doesn’t want him out there.

“I’ll try to get a room far away from other people, okay?” He says. “And I’ll stay up with you as long as I can.”

Castiel takes a long, deep breath. He feels his roots, deep inside of him. He feels Dean next to him, sincere.

Dean who has not called him crazy or insane or kicked him out of the car- Dean who has only asked him to tell him who he is.

Who he was.

He nods.

He opens his eyes and Dean smiles a little, tentatively. “I’ll be right back,” he says.

He hops out of the car, and Castiel sits in there by himself.

* * *

It’s another motel room, same and different from every other motel room Dean has stayed in. He jogs from the car to the room but it’s raining hard enough that he gets fairly drenched in the thirty feet from car to door. Castiel doesn’t move with any kind of urgency though, just seems to move like he’s observing the rain falling, fat drop by fat drop around him.

Dean’s unpacking a little, grabbing clean clothes and his toothbrush when Castiel walks into the room. He stands in the doorway for a moment, that same frozen, calculating thing.

“Shower,” Castiel murmurs, and he walks quickly into the bathroom.

There’s a few moments before he turns on the tap, and when it starts, the room fills with the sound of it.

Dean sits on the bed and looks at the door for a long moment.

There’s a buzzing in his pocket and he looks down at it. Fishes out his cell phone and answers it.

“Winchester,” he says.

“Dean,” comes the voice on the other end. “When the hell you gonna be back in Florida? We’re docked for another week and then we’re headed back out. Season don’t last forever.”

Dean sighs. “I know,” he answers. “Turns out the funeral stuff is taking longer than I thought it would. Got to drive out to California and tell my brother.”

“Phone call too fancy for you, brother?” Benny asks. It sounds like the signal is coming from a long tunnel.

“Don’t have the number,” Dean answers. “Look, I’ll try to be out there by next week, okay? Just...just wait for me, okay?”

Benny sighs. “I don’t know how long we’ll manage, but chances are the guys won’t mind one or two extra days ashore. Just don’t be too late. You’re good but you’re not irreplaceable.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Dean mutters. “I’ll see you a week from now, okay, Benny?”

“You better,” he laughs.

Dean hangs up and takes a long, deep breath.

“Fuck,” he murmurs. He scratches his scalp and lays back on the bed.

He gets back up and pulls some clothes out of the bag for Castiel, another pair for himself. He tugs off his shirt and pants and changes into an old, soft t-shirt.  He throws the clothes for Castiel on the far bed and lays back, resting his head on the pillow.

We are not the monsters of your youth, he remembers.

When he was fifteen, he went on a hunt with dad. Left Sam alone in the motel room and packed up the trunk with the shotguns, the silver, the holy water, and drove twenty miles out to an old, abandoned house.

There had been six of them, tall things made of too much bone and not enough muscle or fat, wrapped in pale white skin. Seven, eight feet tall.

It had taken twelve shots to take out all of them.

They did not run.

They only shrieked.

And when Dean had tried to ask his father what they had done, what had been their terrible sin, John had only passed him a bottle.

Dean still doesn’t really know what they were. What they had done, if anything. He remembers walking into the motel room, Sam asking how it had gone and just smiling a little. Nodding. Because he’s got to be the big hero. Because where John always let Sammy down, Dean’s got to take care of him. Be the good guy.

Dean turns over.

The shower shuts off. Castiel climbs out of the bathroom and puts on the clothes with a rustling noise.

It’s quiet between them until Castiel says, “It wasn’t your fault.”

Dean turns over, laying on his side, to look at Castiel. He is sitting on his own bed. His hair is wet and uncombed, sticking to his forehead.

It’s dual and weird, but Castiel looks both incredibly young and endlessly old sitting across from him in his too large clothes and wet hair and large bags under his eyes.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Castiel repeats. “You couldn’t have known. And everyone makes mistakes.” Castiel lays down on his bed, laying across from Dean. He looks at him in the eye.

His eyes are serious but not unkind.

It occurs to Dean that Castiel is tied up in the nature of things somehow- tied to nature. The primal forces of something.

And nature is not about comfortable lies, it's about uncomfortable truths.

Dean feels very tired.

He reaches out his arm.

Cas reaches out and grabs his hand.

They’re just close enough that they can do this, so they have to grip tight to keep holding on, their arms strained.

Dean’s not sure why he does it.

They fall asleep.

* * *

Castiel wakes up and he's still holding hands with Dean.

His hand is calloused. It is tanned dark, from work and from driving. Where the net has rubbed it at the edges of his palm it is hard and rough. Dean's grip is firm and unyielding. He is still fast asleep across from him, his face slack and peaceful.

Castiel feels the roots inside of him tangling around Dean, pulling him close and dear.

Dean flinches ever so slightly in his sleep, shakes and then groans.

He lets go and then blinks awake, rubbing at his eyes.

Dean sits up and walks to the bathroom.

Castiel lays in bed as the noise comes back. It comes in waves- the couple two door down tangled in their limbs with a two year old between them, the young clerk at the desk fighting sleep as the sun comes up, the children that stayed in this room years ago. It washes over him like the tide coming in, bringing in new feeling and sensation.

He lays there and looks at the space where Dean had slept, the way the blankets are disturbed. The footprint of him in this rented space.

Castiel closes his eyes and falls back asleep.

* * *

Dean wakes up and walks to the bathroom and pisses and washes his hands and realizes that his hand is mostly asleep.

He looks at it and flexes it a few times, feeling it cold and bloodless.

And then he remembers.

He remembers Castiel's hand, clinging to it. A lifeline. An anchor. A root.

Dean looks at the bathroom door, at the potential of the room and the man inside of it.

He's sixteen and there's a boy at the high school. He's got sandy hair and blue eyes and skin so freckled they begin to bleed together. He's got a nice laugh, and he always laughs at the things Dean does, the things Dean says.

Dad catches them holding hands.

They leave town, Dean with a black eye and a long lecture about the things men never do.

Dean feels a long, cold shiver shimmy down his spine. He feels the sensation return to his arm.

He walks back to his own bed and falls asleep with his back to Castiel, arm drawn close to his body.

* * *

Castiel's awake for most the drive the next day, and it's nice, actually.

The sun is bright and clear over head. It's hot outside, which means it's hot inside the car, too. The air conditioning is irregular, so it's been kept off for most of the morning. It's about noon now, though, so it's sputtering and spitting itself along as they shoot across Wyoming, equal parts wild ranches and cattle yards.

They don't say anything, and there's an electric tension inside of Dean.

Castiel doesn't want to push it, though.

"So you have a brother?" Dean asks.

Castiel nods. "Gabriel," he answers. "He's eight years my senior, but I don't know him very well. Apparently he was close to Jimmy." Castiel looks at his hands. "He was kind. He tried to be, but I think I am too broken to be who he needed me to be."

Dean inhales but doesn't say anything, not for a long moment.

"Cas, I-I don't think you're broken," he murmurs. "At least, I don't think...I don't think that stops you from being...good." He bites his bottom lip and looks out of the other window. "I don't think you're uh...beholden to other people's...It's not your fault."

He sounds frustrated. Like he can't quite find the right words.

There, though, among and between the ones he has said, the right words lay.

And Castiel looks over at him, lit by the mid-afternoon sun, freckles bright and glowing on his skin, and he smiles.

* * *

Halfway through Wyoming, Dean starts to turn to take an exit and Castiel gasps and tenses.

“Don’t take that exit,” he grunts. “Don’t- don’t take it.”

Dean pulls out of the turn lane and they drive onward.

Dean glances over at Castiel. He raises an eyebrow.

Castiel’s gritting his teeth, eyes shut, contorted and pained. He shakes his head, back and forth. “Don’t,” he murmurs. “Don’t go there. It’s all- ah-it’s wrong.”

Dean puts a little more pressure on the gas pedal. They speed away from the exit, from that place, and with every ticking mile Castiel seems less terrified and more steady.

He uncurls himself slowly, twitching. He runs his hands through his hair, like he’s trying to right himself, trying to pull himself together. He opens his hands and stretches his fingers wide and open and then re-closes his hands. He leans his head back and exhales.

“Stripmine,” he murmurs. “Changed things there. Something was wrong.”  
“I trust you,” Dean says.

He realizes it’s true after he’s said it.

* * *

They’ve just crossed the border into Utah when Dean stops for the night, grabbing a hotel room. The sun has just begun to set, casting colors in pinks and oranges over the scrubland- just wet enough that low plants are supported but not enough for the trees or the real greenery that Dean likes. He’s been through Utah a few times but not enough to know it real well or really like it. It’s a weird place. One hand, pretty enough for the middle of nowhere, on the other hand, Mormons.

Dean’s never been real sure what to make of Mormons.

He turns to Castiel.

“You know,” he says, “I’ve never been real sure what to make of Mormons.”

And Castiel squints at him, ever so slightly.

“I’m not sure how this relates to any of our previous conversations, Dean,” he answers. “Jimmy was not a Mormon, to my knowledge, he was a devout Lutheran.”

Dean climbs out of the car and shuts the door, sauntering to the lobby. Castiel follows him. “Jesus, Cas, I was just trying to make some small talk,” he sighs. “It can’t always be deep, buried personal traumas and life stories and shit, Jesus."

"Oh," Castiel answers. He's wearing the clothes Dean picked him up in, and Dean can't help but notice that they're pretty old. Maybe when they get to California they'll stop at a Goodwill, get him something new, or at least less old.

They walk into the lobby just as Castiel says, "I think they are looking for meaning in a chaotic and terrifying world and their faith brings meaning for them. I do not fully understand so many of the things they believe but I cannot fault them for it- at least as long as it does not harm others." He frowns, as Dean rings the bell. "Although the underwear sometimes seems a little extreme."

Dean snorts. "Yeah," he says. "Okay."

A nervous looking man with wide eyes and curly hair comes up to the counter. "Hi," he says. "Two rooms or one?"

* * *

Castiel doesn't wander into the shower first thing, he just sits on the bed, legs crossed, back upright. He looks birdlike, his posture so straight and correct.

Dean smirks at him. "You enjoying yourself there?"

"This room is much nicer than the other ones," he answers. "Chuck seems like an honorable man, if a little flinchy."

Dean looks around. Sage green carpet and beige walls, ugly lamps and polyester bedding. "Looks about the same to me," he murmurs.

"The memories of the places, they are different," Castiel replies. "There are many...there are terrible places out there. And many crimes in some of the rooms. This is place is old but clean."

Dean sits on the bed opposite Castiel. Tugs off his boots. "So the thing you can do," he says, "that's not just people? That's places, too?"

Castiel nods a few times. "Places are a kind of people," he replies.

Dean smiles. Pulls off his socks and rolls his ankles a few times.

Castiel looks over at his feet. "Are they sore?" he asks.

Dean shrugs. "It's not too bad. Baby was built without cruise control is all and it can be a long day, six hours with the lead foot on."

Castiel's not wearing shoes. He only has one pair and he only seems to put them on to hike around and go into the diners they stop at. His feet are covered in a hard, thick callous that rasps across the carpet as he stands up and walks to the spot on the floor in front of Dean. He drops to the floor and crosses his legs. He takes Dean’s foot and rotates it a few times, stretching the calf and rolling the ankle.

“What are you doing?” Dean asks.

“Making you not hurt,” Castiel answers brusquely. “Be still.”

“Dude-”

“Shh,” Castiel snaps.

His hands move intentionally, like they are searching. The room is silent but for the wheezing of the air conditioner and the creaking of the bed.

Castiel drives his thumbs into a spot on Dean’s foot and Dean feels something like a cloud part from his mind and a great white light flash through his vision, light something has thrilled through him, shot through him like a fire.

He gasps and falls backwards.

“There it is,” Castiel hums.

He moves to the other foot, and after a little kneading, it happens again. And suddenly Dean is very sleepy and very relaxed.

“What?” he yawns.

“Pressure point,” Castiel answers. “Your whole nervous system is mapped on your foot. They shouldn’t hurt anymore.”

“I’m...sleepy,” Dean murmurs.

Castiel gets up from the floor. “Yes, that’s to be expected, too. Are you hungry?”

Dean nods, tired.

“I’ll be back,” Castiel responds.

He flicks off the lights.

And walks out of the room.

* * *

He’s in a valley, between two mountains, tall. Their snowlines are high and far away, the land before it sparsely green, mostly the rocks and sand and scrub.

He looks up at the sky, high above him. Midnight black. The moon is full and high and golden bright. It is surrounded by pinpoints of stars and something like a veil of color strewn amongst them.

Dean turns around for some reason, and he realizes he is not wearing any clothes.

Behind him, they all stand.

* * *

Dean wakes up gasping, suddenly.

The room is completely dark. He’s not sure what time it is, he’s blinking, trying to get his eyes to focus so he can see the digital clock on the nightstand enough to make sense of the numbers. He can’t though, not really. He shakes his head, trying to figure stuff out when the door opens.

He pulls his revolver out of his pocket and aims.

The light flicks on.

“Dean,” Cas says gently, “Dean, it’s okay. It’s just me.”

He’s holding a brown paper bag. He’s barefoot. He’s a little flushed, like he might be winded.

And he’s completely unarmed and he’s not going to hurt him.

Dean puts the gun down quickly, like it’s red hot. Like it’s hurting him, because Dean suddenly realizes that it is. It feels like a cancer, like something that’s grown out of him and that’s just this dark, terrible thing inside of him.

Castiel is in front of him suddenly, holding him and saying something, but Dean’s not really hearing it, not yet. Not right now.

There’s something inside of him that’s wrong and Dean can’t figure out how to cut it out of himself, just feels it, the wrongness.

He gasps aloud. Hurting.

“Dean,” Castiel murmurs, “Dean, it’s okay, it’s okay. You’re breathing, Dean, you’re alive.”

He wants to vomit.

Castiel is helping him off the bed, moving him gently over to the bathroom and over the toilet and Dean pukes.

Castiel’s hand are warm on him.

“Dean,” Castiel says softly, “it’s not your fault. It’s not your fault, Dean.”

There are spots in Dean’s vision, and he’s blinking, trying to clear them. Rubbing his eyes, painfully.

Dean lets himself crumble onto the bathroom floor, sitting down. He feels little again, like he’s a little more than three feet tall and his house is on fire, he’s thirteen and they’re about to move again and he has to explain it to Sammy, he’s twenty one and Sammy is leaving and there’s nothing Dean can do.

“Dean,” Castiel says, and Dean looks at him.

He’s a little over him, the light over his head, an anumbra, a nimbus,  a halo. His eyes are bright and look into him. They are steady and clear. Blue and bright.

Dean feels like he breathes for the first time in hours.

Castiel takes his hands and sits on the floor across from him. It’s close space, close enough that Dean can feel the warmth of him, the heat inside of his tanned skin, his muscular body. He leans forward, towards Castiel, and rests his forehead on his. So close to him, all he can see are his eyes. Like two bright lights.

“Cas,” Dean says softly, “Hey, Cas.”

Castiel reaches up, runs his hands through his hair. “Hello, Dean,” he answers quietly.

“Where did you go?” Dean asks.

Castiel smiles. He can feel the warmth of it bright in his eyes.

“You were hungry,” he answers. “I figured you would be asleep long enough for me to walk to get you something to eat.”

Dean shakes his head. “You don’t have to do that,” he says. “Please, I’m okay.”

“I know,” Castiel answers. He grabs his hands and holds them gently.

Dean feels tired again.

“Cas,” he says softly. “I’m tired.”

“That’s okay,” Castiel says. “Do you want to go back to bed?”

“Don’t leave me,” Dean says.

“I won’t,” Castiel answers.

* * *

Castiel lays him on a bed and then pushes the other closer to him. He lays down, facing Dean, whose green eyes looks heavy and worn.

There is a weight on Dean. A weight of lives.

There’s a gap of maybe four inches between Dean and Castiel- it’s enough room for them to be close but far enough away that the darkness inside of Dean isn’t broken open by it. Dean stretches his hand forward, towards the gap, and Castiel reaches forward and takes it. He looks relieved across from him.

Castiel watches him until he falls asleep. He watches him long after that, too.

* * *

When Dean wakes up next, it’s the morning.

The room is full of light and he’s curled up on the bed. He’s near to Castiel, whose eyes are closed and whose breath is heavy.

Dean remembers last night like stepping into a cold shower.

“Shit,” he murmurs.

He sits up and goes to the bathroom and steps into the shower and tries to forget all of the things he did, all of the things he said, all of the things he was.

His stomach growls.   
All of this and he’s still hungry.

He shakes his head and finishes showering.

* * *

They don’t really say anything to each other for most of the morning. They pack up the car and they hit the road early- nearly six am when they hit the road.

They’re about three hours on the road when the sun comes up fully and the scrubland changes into the full desert, wide and hot and bright.

Castiel melts as far into the leather of the car as he can, sweat springing up on his brow. It’s August, and the heat is unreal- the air conditioner is working a little but it’s not ideal.

It’s about noon when Dean takes an exit and heads to a motel.

“We’ll sleep through the day,” he says. “Doesn’t make sense to drive through this heat. Gonna kill the car and then kill us."

Castiel nods. "Hate the heat," he mutters. "Awful."

Castiel takes off his shirt- an old Zeppelin shirt of Dean's with Icarus on the front. Sweat is covering his chest and dripping off of him. He has a serious farmer's tan- caramel brown in arms and neck but pale on his chest.  His muscles stand out like this, as does the large scar. It looks so organic on him, it looks so natural, this place where the nature of the world reached out and touched him.

He looks up at Castiel's face, who is looking at him, looking at Castiel.

Dean blushes, flinches a little.

"Sorry," he says.

Castiel shrugs. "When it had first happened, I couldn't stop looking either."

"Do you remember it? Being struck by lightning?" Dean asks. "I mean, I get that you don't remember being...before, but do remember it at all."

Castiel shakes his head slowly. "No," he answers. "I don't remember anything until I woke up in the hospital."

"Does it hurt?" Dean asks.

"It itches sometimes," he says. "But it doesn't really hurt, not unless I'm hurting."

"Do you uh...do you hurt often?" Dean asks.

Castiel shrugs. "I hurt when I hurt," he says.

They pull in front of a motel, and it's practically a race between them to get into the air conditioning.

* * *

They hit the road again at around six, just as the sun is setting. It's cooler, and every minute it turns cooler still.

It's nice, Castiel realizes, feeling the glass turn cold to the touch under his hand.

This far out, deeper and deeper into the desert, the stars wink brighter and bigger.

Dean frowns as they drive into the night.

"Have you been here before?" Castiel asks. There's something about Dean, about the feeling of him next to him that feels worried and tentative. There's a blur of the memory that was in the hotel room last night, the taste of it on the air like old perfume.

Dean shakes his head. "Not enough out here to merit hunting," he says. "I've been east and I've been west but never through."

And he's being honest- Castiel can feel that, too. He can feel when Dean isn't actually fine and he can feel when he's remembering something wrong and he can tell when Dean trusts him with something. And Dean's being honest. At least, to Dean's reckoning, he's being honest.

Castiel's not sure, though.

Dean drives on.

The desert looks like a watercolor painting from this spot. There are millions of small lives out there in the sand, like bleeding points of light and color striping away from the windows.

So much hidden out there, a strange place.

“You should pull to the side,” Castiel murmurs. “There’s something weird out there.”

Dean looks at him, incredulous- Castiel can feel his sight on his back.

“What?” Dean asks.

“Pull to the side, there’s something out there,” he says.

Dean pulls off to the side of the road, and Castiel pulls on his shoes.

He steps out of the car and walks out into the desert.

Dean follows him, a flashlight in his hand.

“Cas,” Dean says, “what do you think is out here?”

There’s something about a space, here, something wrong. It’s like there’s something missing in the space, something that’s empty and he can’t figure out what.

He keeps walking forward and then he sees it.

* * *

Castiel’s doing that same thing he did back in Nebraska but it’s different. He doesn’t look like he’s not-present, he looks like he’s confused. Like something fell out of his pocket and he wants to grab it back. He’s frowning heavily.

And then he steps forward onto something, stands on his tiptoes, pivots, and fucking disappears.

“Cas!” Dean barks, instinctively. “Cas! Where are you?”

“I’m here, Dean,” he hears him, but his voice sounds far away, distant. Like he’s miles away instead of-

“Where did you go?” Dean shouts.

He walks over to where Castiel was. He stands in the spot and looks up, looks down, looks around, but he can’t see anything, there’s nothing there.

“Fuck,” Dean hisses. “Fuck.”

A hand reaches out from thin goddamn air and pulls him suddenly and then-

Then there are mountains where there were no mountains before. They are purple in the moonlight. The sand glitters like broken glass. The moon hangs, closer to Dean then he thinks he’s ever seen before, in his life. It looks like he could reach out and touch it, grab it out of the sky.

It feels like someone squeezes his hand.

Dean turns and looks at Castiel, but it doesn’t look like Castiel.

For one, Castiel isn’t nine feet tall and made out of-

“Light and sound,” Dean whispers.

Wings. And color. And a kind of visible humming, a shaking, a vibrating.

It’s Castiel and it’s not Castiel.

“Hey, buddy,” Dean says, softly.

The color shifts, away from the purple and blue of the reflected night sky and into red and orange, like blushing. There’s waves and shapes and there are faces, four of them on every surface of the shape. A zebra, a lion, an antelope, and something like a passive mask, white and featureless.

The featureless mask catches Dean’s eye and the curve of the mouth changes, becoming a slow grin. There’s a sound like all of the bells on earth, a bright, discordant ringing that makes the fillings in Dean’s teeth buzz like he’s receiving too much feedback.

“Yeah,” he says. “Good to see you, too.”

Something like an arm moves out and points, to the mountains.

And Dean looks there, and it’s all of them.

A wendigo when he was thirteen, a werewolf when he was seventeen, the things in the barn-

They’re all there. They’re all there and they’re walking towards him slowly.

There is no threat to them. Just slow approach.

Dean grips the hand of Castiel-Not-Castiel next to him as tight as he can, because it’s the only thing keeping him upright.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers.

They look like they’re made of cellophane. Some of them are huge and lumber forward; others are small and skip like small children.

Some of them were small children, Dean realizes.

He feels so heavy.

“I’m sorry,” he repeats.

“I’m sorry.”

He feels so heavy, he feels so empty. He feels like he’s going to break.

“I didn’t know,” he says.

His knees give out, he collapses onto the bare dirt. “I didn’t know.”

He feels something in his hair and he looks up, he looks at them, as they all look at him. Some of them have eyes, bright and huge. They look at him, understanding. Reading him.

It feels like a benediction.

They all walk by, they all brush by him, they all touch him.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t know.”

Dean feels something like wind, a breath that’s been released, and then they’re all gone.

Or maybe he’s gone.

Because Castiel is there, actual Castiel with his dark, messy hair and blue eyes and strong hands, touching him and pulling him upward and taking him back to his car. The ringing is gone. The color is gone. The mountains are gone.

And Dean doesn’t feel quite so heavy any more.

* * *

Dean’s not sure how long it’s been, but he’s sitting in the driver’s seat and he’s not moving and Castiel is curled up in a ball in the passenger seat.

His keys are in his hands.

He looks out the window, at the desert. At the graveyard hidden inside of it.

And he knows with a sudden sureness that whatever he needed to bury there, it’s there. And it’s gone. And it’s okay.

He jams the keys into the ignition and the engine shudders to life.

And he drives out of that place, to California.

* * *

When Castiel wakes up, the sun has risen and they’re still driving. He blinks a few times, eyes adjusting and looks over at Dean.

“You know,” Dean says, “you could have driven.”

Castiel shakes his head. “I don’t know how,” he says. “And she’s your machine. It would have been a violation. I wanted to sleep some more, anyway.”

Dean nods. “Thanks,” he says.

Castiel smiles.

“We should stop for the day,” Dean says. “I know you slept all day but I’m tired as hell and the heat it only gonna get worse until nightfall. We’ll take the day and by tomorrow be pushing the California border.”

Castiel nods.

“Hey,” Dean says, “did you know what that was?”

Castiel looks over at him and nods.

Dean’s freckles have multiplied in desert sun, and the beginnings of a sunburn are forming on his arm. He frowns, his brow wrinkling slightly. “What was it?” he asks.

Castiel shrugs. “Graveyard,” he answers. “For them.”

“We burned them,” Dean says. “Dad and I, we burned them. They don’t have bodies anymore.”

Castiel shakes his head, because the bodies don’t matter. “It’s where their memory goes. Where their souls go. They don’t need the body to be remembered.”

Dean’s eyes are the brightest things in this space, two grass green spots that are peering into him, as if trying to puzzle something out of him. Something that makes sense. “Do they remember?” he asks. “Or do the mountains?”

Castiel smiles at him. “Yes,” he answers.

Dean nods.

He doesn’t say anything for a long time before he murmurs, “Do you think they understood?”

The question is unfinished, but Castiel can read inside of it the ocean of things they might understand. That Dean was a boy. That his father was angry. That he was angry. That he thought he was protecting people. That he didn’t understand.

“They did,” he answers.

Dean nods again.

He switches on the radio.

Music Castiel doesn’t know plays.

* * *

Dean pulls to a motel about an hour later, at around eleven AM. He pays for the room, he walks into it, and he falls asleep.

No intermediary period, no small talk with Castiel, he’s out.

He hadn’t really slept well since they’d entered Utah and the handful of nights beforehand had been rough, too. And passing out doesn't really count as sleeping either, and he's been doing a lot of that lately, too.

He sleeps dreamlessly, easily, and when he wakes up, the sun is long gone and Castiel is sitting on the other bed, legs crossed, back straight.

"Why do you sit like that?" Dean asks. "You look stiff as hell."

Castiel glances over at him and says, "Discipline is part of it."

Dean scowls. "You have to be disciplined to relax?"

Dean can see in the silhouette of the streetlight the slow spread of a smile over Castiel's face.

"It helps me keep my head clear," he says. "Thinking of the body and a specific posture prevents me from panicking over the space I'm around. There was an instructor at the...at the third institution they put me in."

Dean gets up and stretches, his joints popping loudly.

"Your brother put you in an institution, yeah?" he asks.

"Him and my wife," Castiel answers. "My ex-wife, at least. Jimmy's wife."

It clicks with Dean suddenly that Castiel had a wife. That he had a wife and a daughter and a family in the life that was before the lightning strike.

"When I was in the graveyard," Dean says, "I saw you."

Castiel nods.

"No," he blurts, "you don't understand- I saw the light and the sound."

"Oh," Castiel says softly. "O-oh."

"Is that how you feel?" Dean asks. "Because...there was so much of you. It was amazing, dude. You were so...Cas, how do you stand it?"

Castiel sighs a short laugh. "Dean, why do you think Amelia and Gabriel put me in the institution?" He runs his hands through his hair. "I can't stand it. I literally- I can't. When they brought me home from the hospital, I nearly burned the house down, I was suffocating under it all, the memories of them and the life there and the life that was Jimmy's and I got so caught up in it, I had a seizure and knocked over a candle."

Castiel looks at him with blue eyes like fires and says, "Dean, I'm broken."

Dean steps forward, closer to him. "Cas," he says softly, "I don't think you're broken." He huffs a brief laugh. "You're...you're incredible, man. You're weird and funny and smart and you see these things in people and places and you- Cas, you saw the place where I'm broken and you...you made it better."

Dean wants to say he’s fixed him, but he knows that’s not really true. It’s not that he was never broken, it’s not that the hurt was never there. It’s that the place where the hurt was has healed. It’s changed. It’s not open and bleeding, it’s scarred over. Where there was a chasm there is now a tracery of hurt, something sealed and slight.

Suddenly, Dean wants to touch him. Wants to reach out and be near to him and wants to touch him.

He reaches out gently and touches his face.

The feeling of his stubble is under his fingertips. The texture of his skin.

Castiel leans forward, through space, and kisses Dean.

And suddenly, every single reason Dean could ever think of to not-

To not.

Flies away.

Dean kisses him back, like pulling nectar from the desert. His mouth is warm and soft, his teeth hard where they bite into his bottom lip, his eyelashes tickling soft against Dean’s cheekbones.

His hands dart up Dean’s chest, scratching against his torso and his body. Dean gasps against his mouth, grabbing his shoulders and pushing him down on the bed.

Dean pulls back from him for a second and says, “Cas-”

“Yes, Dean?” He asks, sounding frustrated.

“Cas, I wanna fuck you,” Dean says.

“Yes, I know,” Castiel answers.

Dean pauses for a second. “Oh,” he says. “Is that cool?”  
Castiel sighs heavily again and surges forward to suck a bright, hard bruise against his neck. Dean gasps, the sound of his voice broken on the air. Hurting, aching. He hasn’t touched someone like this in months, not since before he got on the boat. This feels so different, though. Castiel doesn’t feel like anyone he’s ever been with.

Dean stops for a second.

“Fucking what?” Castiel asks, pulling away from his skin, which he wants to dot with bruises, with the marks of his mouth, to scatter with new constellations.

Dean looks embarrassed. “Cas,” he says softly, “Cas, am I your first?”

“Dean, Jimmy had a goddamn child,” he barks. “Are you going to fuck me?”

Dean punches the headboard, and it rattles. “No, dammit, Cas, am I your first?”  
Castiel rolls his eyes. “Of course you are but its’ not like...I don’t think I’m a virgin, Dean, and if you don’t stick it in me, so help me I will walk out of this room.”

Dean smiles for a brief second. “Okay,” he says. “Okay, yeah.”

In the room all he can hear is his own heartbeat and their breath, covered and smothered by this needful, desperate crush. Heavy pants of breath cut off, trampled by the cover of his mouth, by his teeth fretting along the bottom of his lip- tight, tender, sharp little bites.

Dean feels his body sing with the sensation, brought to that incredible high so fast his head spins. Dizzy with it.

There have been a few others, before. Never as many as Dean would have liked. Never as many as Dean noticed- as many as he wanted. A few, treasures, on his few solo hunts.

Nothing like this, though. Nothing this intense, this human, this real. His fingernails skittering along his back and ribs, eyes closed, dark hair messy in Dean’s hands- Dean realizes that he knows Castiel and Castiel knows him. This is not a name he can forget, this is not a man whose body he will remember like a tool, a goal, an endpoint. This is fucking biblical.

There’s nothing like this, Dean realizes as Castiel pulls his shirt off and grabs him with hands capped with sharp fingernails. His hands are bruising, his grip is so firm.

Dean fumbles over to the floor next to the bed, arm outstretched and balanced awkwardly. Castiel moves from his neck to his mouth to his jaw- hard bites, soft bites, sweet suckling and this talented tongue. With one hand, Dean jerks the zipper down the bag and roots around for a bottle and a condom.

Castiel moves his hands to his own fly and starts to pull down his pants.

His hipbones peer out first and then there’s so much more to see, like a work of fine art, there on the bed. Although Dean himself has always drifted towards muscles wrapped in small cushion of fat- nothing too serious, just a little bulkier than the next guy- Castiel is whip-lean. His muscles are hard underneath him- his stomach and hips tight and sharp, his thighs muscular and defined. Dean immediately rests his hands there, on his hips, and he can feel Castiel buck under his grip like a great fish that has escaped from the sea- all power. All strength.

It makes him feel warm all over, makes him feel like fire. His hands wrap over, around, as Castiel moves, and he grabs his tight ass. Castiel growls, muffled, under the touch.

“Fuck me,” he slurs against Dean’s skin, and Dean fumbles for the lube, eager to oblige.

* * *

The lube feels greasy and cool as Dean spreads it around his hole, and then there’s the slow, deep burn as Dean begins to insert his fingers.

Dean’s hands move adeptly and gently. He holds his finger over his hole for a moment, moving gently, small strokes, featherlight, over his tight hole.

It’s not so much that Dean pushes his finger it, it’s that his hole pulls him in. The sensation is hungry and empty and desperate, and one finger isn’t enough. The second finger isn’t either.

Castiel gasps and grunts, because this is so good. It aches, it hurts a little, but he wants nothing more. Nothing else. He couldn’t imagine having anything else. Anyone else. There was desire after the hospital. The drugs, sometimes they made him not want it, though. And he never met anyone he would want to share this with, this feeling of coming apart. Of being deconstructed.

Dean slowly brushes another finger into him and Castiel draws shuddering breaths. He feels his eyes fly back into his skull, as if there is some secret written there that he must read now.

This is so much more than his hand on himself, this is so much more than hazy un-remembered memories, this is so much more. With Dean, near Dean, Dean surrounding him he is more. They are more.

Dean brushes against the switch inside of him, the bright spot that makes him fly apart into the millionsbillionstrillions starsatomsleavessounds that compose himself and Castiel shouts, he scream with it.

This is so much, and he will beg Dean for more.

* * *

Dean would be content to just roll his finger against Castiel’s prostate, so gently, for hours. Days. Watching him writhe like a live wire on the bed, his muscles pulling him up and down and rolling and wriggling. A wild thing. An untamable thing.

“Dean,” he stutters. “Dean- now. Fuck me. Now.”

Dean removes his fingers and slathers his hard, aching dick with lube. He rests his hands over Castiel’s hips, firmly framing them still for just a moment.

He presses in slowly, as slowly as he can, and Dean is more sure that this is death, that he is dying, that he has died then he has ever been.

Castiel grunts, he cries underneath him. Yes, he murmurs. Yes.

Dean cannot string that thought together, but this is so good. Oh, Jesus, this is so good.

Castiel is warm and tight. He rolls, he rocks- underneath him, surrounding him. He moves like an animal, wild and un-self-conscious. Freely. Sweat blooms against his skin, his body flushing. His body blooming.

He’s more than warm, really, he’s hot. Sweat condensing on his skin, his breath scorching puffs against Dean’s body, his voice cracking and breaking in broken praise on the air- Dean, yes, yes- Y-es, ple-please, Jesus, Fuck, Fu-ck, fuck me. A mantra, a prayer, a shout.

Under him, around him, Castiel looks unreal.  He looks like he’s flickering between that starlight shape in the desert and the incredibly human, tender body that Dean knows. That Dean touches, that rides beside Dean in the dark car, that sleeps and snores and eats cautiously.

His hands are over his hipbones, sharp like knives under his tanned skin. When Dean moves his hands up further, he can feel the undulating, rocking flex of his spine, his abs, his ribs.

He is a nebula, a nursery for the birth of stars. He is the scattered cloudy purple, he is the twinkling of the stars, he is the glow of the full moon.

He is his growling voice; he is the sound of gravel under a foot; he is the scream of cicadas in the hot summer air, he is the woosh of an erupting geyser; he is the invisible sound of snow falling.

There’s so much power inside of Castiel.

He is like riding a comet. Being chained to a comet. Tied inexorably to something bright and shooting and huge.

Dean isn’t thinking, Dean isn’t seeing. There is so much information but it’s like Dean doesn’t have the brain to really process it. It’s like there’s a concert of noise and data and it’s changing constantly. It’s ringing, it’s burning, it’s searing.

So strangely, it’s home.

“Cas,” he gasps. “Cas.”

He loves him.

He loves him, and he’s home.

* * *

Castiel wakes up with his arms and legs wrapped around Dean, warm and solid. Dean’s nose is buried in his clavicle. His body is made of built, hard muscle and his skin is warm and soft.

Castiel feels his roots around Dean, and he realizes with all of the everything inside of him that he loves Dean.

That he goes where Dean goes because Castiel goes with Dean, for the rest of his life. For the rest of forever. Castiel’s bound to Dean. Chained to him, knit to him. The fabric and the roots that make Castiel, they are wound forever to him.

Dean stirs briefly and blinks awake. He looks up at him, his green eyes the brightness of spring fields.

“Hey, Cas,” he says, sleepy.

“Hello, Dean,” he answers.

Dean pulls himself up and away from Castiel. Sits on the edge of the bed and rubs at his eyes.

“What is your brother’s name?” Castiel asks.

“Sam,” Dean answers. “Sam Winchester.”

“Okay,” Castiel says.

Dean stretches awake. “Let’s get ready to go,” he says.

And they pack up the car.

* * *

Nevada is a goddamn desert, but that’s to be expected, given that it’s fucking Nevada. First few hundred miles, the desert wasn’t too bad, a nice change even, but the lack of greenery is beginning to drive Dean very slowly fucking insane.

Flat. Flat and brown.

Castiel just watches out the window, watches the scenery roll by.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been through the desert before,” he says. “I don’t think I like it. There isn’t any birdsong.”

Dean looks over at him. He doesn’t burn under the day sun, not like he himself does. He just turns a deeper and deeper shade of caramel. His hair stays dark, though, and always messy.

“You hungry?” Dean asks.

Castiel shrugs. “Not particularly,” he answers. His stomach growls.

“Seriously,” Dean says, “maybe your body wouldn’t talk to me so loud if you would just be honest about this kind of thing.”

“I don’t think about it,” Castiel says. “I’m bad about remembering the feeling and to eat and I just- I don’t feel it until someone brings it up.” He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’m not...I’m not good at this.”  
Dean shakes his head and turns on the radio.

He leaves his hand on the gear change, loose.

An invitation.

* * *

A day later, they’ve made it into California. It’s been a weird day and a half, though, the memory of the hotel room in Nevada floating between them.

Castiel wants to reach out and touch him. He almost has a few times now, his hand hovering near him, his pause in the cab of the car to reach out and hold his hand. To kiss him when standing up, to curl up under the covers with him, to touch him.

Dean feels similarly, Castiel can sense it off of him in colors, in waves of heat, in sharp sensation. He wants Castiel.

Castiel wants him, too.

This should be so easy, but it isn’t.

He feels like he’s been struck out of the air every time he wants to. Every time he tries.

They’re four hours into California when Dean says, “Finally,” and pulls off the highway over to a small town.

He pulls into a parking lot and says, “Look, dude, it’s not that I don’t love sharing clothes with you but uh, you’ve got to get a bigger wardrobe than the jeans and the worn out t-shirt, okay?”

Castiel feels his stomach flip expressively at love sharing clothes with you, but instead he says, “You don’t have to buy clothes for me.”  
Dean shakes his head. “Nope,” he says. “I don’t. But I’m going to.”

He twists the keys out of the ignition and climbs out of the car.

Castiel looks at the building. A thrift store with a blue sign. Full of people, full of memory. It’s terrifying.

Dean knocks on the window and Castiel flinches toward him, feeling the roots inside of him grapple around Dean in some desperate attempt to hold him close, to protect him from the people inside.

He takes a deep breath and opens the door.

Dean offers him his hand.

And Castiel takes it.

* * *

They hold hands walking in, they hold hands confronting the racks. Dean knows, tethered to Castiel, that if he lets go of him, it will hurt him. The place is loud- it’s a Saturday afternoon and it’s packed to the gills with children and their mothers; teenagers poking through, disregarding gender in a quest for what looks like the most godawful ugly prints they can find.

Castiel pulls away a few shirts, a few pair of pants. Washed, heathered colors in gentle earth tones. Dean pulls a few flannel shirts (if not for Cas then definitely for him) and Castiel finds a trench coat and pauses over it for a long moment.

“Cas?” Dean asks.

“This,” Castiel says. “This is mine.”

Dean raises an eyebrow. “Really? This thing?”

Casitel nods gravely.

“Alright,” Dean says. “Let’s go for it.”  
They check out. It’s maybe thirty five, forty bucks worth of clothes and it all gets thrown into a plastic bag and Cas darts back to the bathroom, letting go of Dean’s hand.

And when he comes back, the coat is on.

It’s a little too big for him. Long in the sleeves, broad in the shoulders. The lapels are wide and long. It hangs open on his body. Castiel looks up at Dean, and in the moment there, surrounded by the noise and sound of the Goodwill, Castiel looks so fully alien.

Alien like that moment in the desert, the pillar of light and sound, with the four faces, with the wide wings and pointing hands.

Castiel smiles at him, just barely, and Dean knows that he was right- that the coat is Castiel’s. Irrefutably.

Dean grins at him.

A lightbulb pops over head, glass shattering.

There’s a brief scream, and then every light in the building explodes.

* * *

Neither of them can stop laughing. Castiel knows no one was hurt and it was unintentional on his part and he can’t stop laughing and neither can Dean. They ran out of there, dove into Dean’s car and now they’re driving, deeper into California as fast as Dean dares and they’re laughing. They’re laughing and they’re holding hands and nothing since he woke up in that hospital has felt this right.

When they finally stop, Dean grins and says, “Damn, man, maybe we should shop online from now on.”

“I don’t know anything about computers,” Castiel blurts. He shakes his head. “The last time they put me in front of one, the screen turned blue and the nurse got angry.”

“Okay,” Dean says. “I’ll be shopping online for you then. At least, when I get a computer.”

He smiles at Castiel, like he himself is sunlight.

Castiel feels so strong in his new clothes.

Dean flicks the radio on and says, “You know, other than Palo Alto, I’m not sure where I’m going. Actually, not sure sounds like I have some kind of idea. I have no goddamn clue where I’m going.”

“You’re not going to Palo Alto,” Castiel says. “You’re going to Tiburon.”

“The fuck is a Tiburon?” Dean shouts, throwing his hands in the air briefly. “Goddamn!”  
“It’s an unincorporated community in Marin County,” Castiel answers, because he knows it solidly. Completely. He knows that’s where Dean should be going. Where he’s supposed to go.

Dean taps the side of his own head. “You uh, you gettin’ some kind of radio up there?”

Castiel nods sagely, as good an explanation as any.

And Dean grins again.

It’s a warm feeling, to know he made Dean make that face.

* * *

As they draw nearer and nearer, Dean seems more and more distant, more nervous.

He doesn’t talk as much or joke as much. The radio stays on, low. Sometimes they flip through stations but mostly it’s Dean flipping the same old Led Zeppelin tape over.

“Turn here,” Castiel says, and Dean does.

He doesn’t ask questions about directions.

They’re twenty minutes away when Dean asks, “So...uh...what now?”  
“You don’t have to turn yet,” Castiel answers.

“No,” he says, “no...I mean...you and me.”

Castiel’s heart seizes in his chest just a moment.

“You can just drop me off,” he says. “I’ll probably hike up to Seattle. Good trees there. Good birds.”

Dean doesn’t say anything for a moment. There’s apprehension to it.

“Oh,” he says. The sound is hollow and scared. When Castiel looks over at Dean- guiltily- he doesn’t see Dean, not optically.

He sees Dean as a series of feelings. His terror. His anger. His anxiety. His hurt.

Castiel realizes that Dean thinks he doesn’t want him.

“Dean,” he whispers, “Dean, it’s not that- Dean, you’re going to meet your family again, your brother. Your life...your life is going to start again.” He aches as he says it. “Dean, I’m not real. I’m not a good person. I’m a vacation, I’m a toy. I’m not a forever, not for you.”

“No,” he interrupts, and Castiel startles. Dean looks at him, green eyes wide and pleading. “No, Cas, No- no, never. Never leave me.” He looks back at the road and licks his lips. “Cas, you’re so funny and so smart and so weird, okay? You’re the weirdest dude I’ve ever met and I’ve met some weirdos, okay and Cas, jesus, Cas, you’re...Cas, I love you.”

And Castiel finds himself smiling. He can’t stop smiling, he can’t stop it. He feels a warm, full feeling inside of himself, like the sun has risen inside of him.

“Cas,” Dean says, “you’re fucking stuck with me, okay?”

Castiel laughs, suddenly. “It sounds like you knew it exactly what now,” he says.

Dean laughs back. He smiles.

“Turn here,” Castiel says.

* * *

Dean turns onto a small, residential street.

“It’s the third house on the right,” Castiel says. “On the corner.”

It’s not a big house. Two floors, big windows. There’s an oak tree in the front yard and a long driveway with a big mailbox.

Dean’s stomach feels like it’s going to crawl up into his mouth.

He pulls into the drive. He twists off the ignition. He sits there.

Castiel settles his hand into Dean’s.

The door opens and-

Sam’s hair is way too long, and he’s also way too tall.

It’s the first thing Dean thinks when he sees him, the first thing that rolls through his head when the front door opens and his tall, tall brother steps out.

He freezes there, in his suburban doorway. Blood drains out of his face and his eyes grow huge. He turns in the doorway to say something to someone, the tendons in his throat straining strangely.

Dean remembers.

Castiel’s hand is warm over his thigh.

“He thinks you’re your father,” he murmurs. “He’s telling his wife to take the children to the basement.”

Dean looks at Castiel suddenly and then back at Sam.

The three cars in the driveway. The minivan. The unkempt yard- it all clicks into place for some reason.

Dean swallows heavily.

Unlocks the door. Steps out of the car.

And Sam’s face changes enormously.

He shakes his head a few times and then walks, his giant legs carrying him terrifyingly fast to the car and he takes Dean and he hugs him.

He hugs him more tightly than Dean ever thought he could.

Dean stands there, startled, for a few seconds before he realizes what’s happened here.

He’s not going to tell him to leave. He’s not going to kick him out or call the cops. He’s touching him. He’s clinging to him. He wants him here. He wants him in his life.

“What happened?” he asks, his voice different than it was almost eight years ago now. His voice a little heavier, a little older. “What happened? I tried calling the numbers for years and I never- you never- I thought-”

His voice sounds thick. Weighty. Grieving.

Dean holds him. Holds his brother for a few seconds more before he pulls away.

Sam’s face is red and blotchy- his little brother has always been an ugly crier and this is something he didn’t grow out of. Dean’s face is  little damp, too, but that doesn’t matter. It’s Dean’s job to take care of Sam’s tears; his own can wait. They could always wait.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “When I went out in the season I couldn’t have a phone and-”  
“Season?” Sam asks.

“Fishing,” Dean replies. “I’m a fisherman. Work boats out along the Atlantic. And Dad lost your number for me before then and-”  
Sam’s face clouds again and he looks at the car and he looks back at Dean. Looks at the shiny black paint and sleek doors. The windshield. The desert still in his tires. Looks at Cas in the passenger seat too.

“How did it happen?” he asks, and the weight of everything changes rather a lot, all of the sudden.

“Not sure,” Dean answers. “Found him in a parking lot of an old school, clutching at his heart. Tox said it was a weird cold that did it, though, some sort of lung thing. Still, wouldn’t surprise me if he’d gone in the saddle.”

Sam nods a couple of times. The incredibly dorky ponytail he has bounces a little.

A woman opens the door. Long brown hair and serious brown eyes. Petite. Grave looking. “Baby,” she says. “Can I get Jess and put away the big knife or do you need the gun?”

Sam smiles. “Naw,” he answers. “Naw, it’s just fine. Grab Jess and Mary, they should meet my big brother.”

She cocks and eyebrow and heads back inside.

Sam blushes a little. “So I won’t make fun of you for not introducing me to your friend there if you swear not to say anything about the domestic situation I’m about to show you.”

“Aw, Sammy,” Dean says. “You got yourself a cute little wife and couple of daughters. I’m sure they’re beautiful, I won’t-”

“No, uh,” Sam interrupts. “Just...uh, wait.”

Dean knocks on the window and gestures for Cas to come out.

Castiel looks like he always does- he looks rumpled and irritated and little nervous. His hair is  mess and his clothes are wrinkled. His hand shakes as he extends it outward.

“Hi,” Sam greets. “I’m the younger brother.”

“Hello, Sam,” Castiel replies, gravely. “I’m the hitchhiker.”

Dean feels a sharp stab of guilt.

“This is Cas,” he says. “He’s-”

“Sam?” Another woman peeks her head out of the door. “Are you going to bring your guests in? I’ve already made dinner and Ruby needs to know how many to set the table for.”

Dean looks at his brother and raises and eyebrow.

Sam’s blush deepens. "Two more, baby," he says. "We'll be right in."

She eyes the car a little warily, a little more trustingly but not much more than the other woman, before she eases back inside.

Sam looks back at his brother and Castiel, all hazel eyes and embarrassment. "You said you wouldn't laugh," he warns.

Dean smiles.

He looks over at Castiel and raises his own eyebrow. You gonna be okay? the look asks.

Castiel looks at the house and at Sam.

He nods.

Dean doesn't fully understand Castiel's thing, but he trusts him, he realizes.

"You have bags?" Sam asks.

"Nothing that can't wait to be brought in until later," Dean answers. "Let's meet the missus."

Sam turns a little more pink and walks into the house. Dean and Castiel follows him.

The house is warm and clean. Lots of mid-evening light filtering into the windows, lots of baby toys, everywhere. Lots of pictures on the walls.

“Take off your shoes,” Sam says. “Jess just vacuumed and if you fuck the floors back up-”  
“Language!” A voice calls from the back of the house.

“She won’t be speaking for another twenty months!” Sam calls in response.

“Don’t care!” the voice calls back.

Sam looks at Dean, hazel eyes full of unsounded laughter. “Jess just cleaned and it’s enormously hard to clean this place because Mary is so little-”  
“Mary?” Dean asks, his heartbeat speeding as he tugs off his boots.

Sam smiles like the world has spun a little closer to summer.

They walk into a kitchen. There’s a big, round table with six chairs around it. Six plates are set and there are bowls and plates full of food.

There’s the blonde woman and the petite brunette woman and there’s a baby.

“Baby,” Dean says.

Sam grins. He takes the baby from the blonde woman and says, “Dean, this is our daughter. Mary.”

“Oh,” he says.

* * *

The baby has blonde curls and sleepy brown eyes and Dean takes her and he’s visibly taken.

Sam is tall. Taller than Dean and built broad but not as muscular, as built as he should be. He has a face that seems made for smiling, or at least he doesn’t seem able to stop.

He watches Dean and the baby, Mary, for a moment and then turns to Castiel.

“Sorry,” he says, “I- it’s been like, eight damn years since I saw my brother, who are you?”

There’s a sound of throats being cleared behind him and Sam turns pink. “Sorry,” he says. “This is uh, this is Ruby and Jess.”  
The brunette woman steps forward and offers her hand to Castiel. Her grip is firm. “Hi,” she says. “Ruby. You’re Sam’s brother’s...friend?”

Castiel nods. “Effectively,” he says.

“And I’m Jess,” the other woman says, stepping forward with a bowl full of tomatoes and mozzarella and basil and Castiel’s stomach growls conspicuously.

“From the sound of your friend, you’re worse than Sam about eating regularly,” Jess says. Her voice is light but serious. Maternal. “Both of you, sit. Eat.”  
Dean sits down, still holding the baby. Wrapt. Sam sits next to him, and Ruby and Jess are next to him. The three of them grab scoops of food and spin the lazy susan on the table.

“So,” Castiel says, “is one of you married to Sam?”

Sam coughs around a bite of food and Ruby says, “It’s a long story.”  
Dean looks up. “Seems like a straightforward question to me-”  
“We’re...it’s all four of us,” Sam interrupts. “Together. Uh, legally, it’s me and Jess and Mary is uh, ours. But it’s all of us.”

Dean raises an eyebrow.

“I told you it was a long story,” Ruby says. She points a spoon at Castiel. “Fucking eat something, dude, you’re starving and we can all tell.”

“Language,” Jess reprimands again, and next to him she scoops a pile of what looks like quinoa and mushrooms.  “You should eat.”

“You’re worse than Dean,” Castiel says.

“Yes,” Ruby says, replacing a spoon and grabbing her fork. “Yes, Dean, what do you do?”  
Her voice is sharp. Castiel reads the air, the tight cord of tension between the five of them. He and Dean are strangers. This child is young- barely more than four months. And Sam has likely told them about the road.

They’ve probably gathered the same things about Dean’s father that Castiel has.

“I’m a fisherman,” Dean answers. He can’t seem to look away from the baby. “Work the Atlantic.”  
He looks up suddenly and says, “Sorry, I uh...I came because uh...John died.”  
Ruby looks surprised. Jess seems to be frozen.

“Oh,” Jess says.

“Good goddamn riddance,” Ruby says.

Castiel snorts on his water.

Baby Mary gurgles.

“Oh, goodness,” Jess says. “She’s probably hungry, too. Do either of you mind?”

Castiel shakes his head.

“Mind what?” Dean asks.

“He doesn’t mind,” Sam answers.

He looks over at his brother. “So you’ve been at sea?” He asks. “Do you uh...do you still-”  
Dean shakes his head. “No,” he says.

Sam nods. He pokes at his food and takes a bite.

“How was school?” Dean asks. “You a big shot lawyer now?”

Sam move his head from side to side and shrugs. “School was good. Uh, but I’m not a lawyer. It’s uh...it got complicated.”

Dean nods a few times. He takes a spoonfuls of something, a salad of cucumbers and sesame. “So what do you do?”

“Some translation work,” Sam answers. “I work with the latin department from home. But mostly uh, I’m a stay at home dad, mostly.”

“Will you be staying long?” Ruby asks.

“Do you have a bathroom I could use?” Castiel asks.

* * *

Ruby shows Cas to the bathroom, leaving Jess and Mary and Sam alone with Dean.

“So,” Jess says, “John died.”

“Yeah,” Dean answers.

“And you decided that it would be a good idea to get back in touch with Sam,” she says.

“Jess,” Sam murmurs.

“No,” Jess says, “no, you couldn’t be there for your brother when he went to school and when he spent nearly six months in the hospital but as soon as that son of a bitch kicks the bucket you can come back immediately.”

“Jess,” Sam says.

“Did you think you could come here and he would just want you in his life, no explanations or exceptions?” She says. “Did you think it would all go away after some time?”  
“I didn’t-” Dean starts. “I didn’t.”

He runs his hands through his hair.  “Not a night went by that I didn’t wish it happened the way it did,” he says. “And I know that regret isn’t a substitute for...for what Sam needed. I didn’t expect dinner or to meet the three of you. I just wanted to- Sam deserved to know. And if you want me out of your lives, I understand. Cas and I, we’ll put on our shoes and we’ll go.”

“Don’t,” Sam says. He looks at Dean. He looks so sad. He looks like he did when Dean told him in fourth grade that they were moving again. Sixth time in two years. “Don’t.”

He looks at Jess and says, “I know you’re angry. And that’s okay.” He turns back to Dean. “A lot has changed. More than just starting the family, Dean, so much has changed and- I missed you, okay?” He smiles, a tired smile.”I don’t think it was your fault. It wasn’t your fault, everything that happened. I can’t blame you for staying, Dean. I can’t blame you for leaving, either. And I’m glad that you’re here. I know you’re allergic to feelings or whatever but...don’t go. Not yet.”

Jess looks at Dean seriously. It is a level stare. Her eyes are blue and steely and communicative. Don’t fuck with him. Don’t hurt him.

“Okay,” Dean says. “You got a spare room for me and Cas for the night, or do we need to go to a motel?”

* * *

Ruby ushers him to a bathroom, and Castiel washes his face and hands and tries to lose himself in the sound of the running water.

He’s not sure how long he’s in there when he hears knocking on the door. “Hey there, cowboy, you still awake?” Ruby asks.

Her voice is high but sharp. Commanding.

It’s hard to stay grounded here. Ruby and Jess and Sam and Mary are all written in every grain of the wood and dent in the brick. It’s hard not to lose himself inside of their moments, their photographs, their memories, their love.

She knocks on the door. “Dude,” she says. “You okay?”

“Can you send Dean up here?” He asks, because if there’s anyone who can ground him, it’s Dean, who his roots are wrapped and twisted firmly around.

“Sure,” she says, and there’s the sound of footsteps walking away.

* * *

Ruby comes downstairs and points to Dean. “Your friend is trapped in the bathroom?” She says.

“Shit,” Dean says, remembering.

I had a seizure.

He darts away from the table and pounds upstairs, towards a closed door with the sound of running water on the other side.

He knocks. “Cas?” He barks. “Cas, you okay? You in there?”

The door opens suddenly, and Castiel stands there, shaking in space. His hair and face are wet. He looks pale.

He closes his eyes and sighs, easily. “Overwhelming,” he says. “Over-overhwhelming.”

Castiel reaches out and Dean takes him. He sags against him.

“It’s okay,” he says. “I’ve got you, bud.”

Castiel nods against his shirt, hand gripping the material. “Overwhelming,” he repeats.

“Yeah, I feel you,” he answers.

They stand there for a few minutes before Castiel pulls away. He wipes a hand over his face, his color back and the sweat barely noticeable

“What the hell?” Ruby asks behind them.

Dean turns. “Uh, Cas has a uh-”

“I have a sensory processing disorder,” he interrupts. “Too many people, too much new information- I get overwhelmed easily. I’m doing much better than I used to- I’ve seen professionals about it but your home…” He trails off for a moment. “There is so much here.”

Ruby cocks an eyebrow. “Alright,” she says. “Well, not that I’m not sure that Jess hasn’t given you the same speech or anything but-” and at this she pauses, words heavy on the air- “Sam deserves more, okay? Me and Jess, we couldn’t give a rats ass about you and your friend here. You don’t know what we’ve been through, you don’t know what he’s been through- you don’t know. So if you’re here just to walk away again-”  
“I’m not,” Dean interrupts.

Ruby pauses. Gives him a look like she has a loaded gun in her hands. “So if you’re here to just walk away again,” she continues, her voice significantly lower than it was moments before, “you will leave my house now and you will never come back.”

Dean shakes his head. “I’m here,” he says. “I’m here. And I’m not going to try to defend what happened okay- it was...it was fucked up. I fucked up. I thought-” He sighs.

He feels Castiel’s hand entwined with his.

“I thought I could save him,” he says. “And by the time I found out I couldn’t, it was too late.”  
Ruby looks at him for a long time. “Your old man sounds like he was a real piece of work,” she says.

“Sam’s told you stories, I’m sure,” he murmurs.

She shrugs. “Come on,” she says. “I know that hippie shit Jess makes isn’t great but it’s gotta be better than whatever gas station junk you’re running on.”

* * *

Ruby and Jess and Castiel and Mary all go in the backyard for some reason, leaving Dean and Sam in the kitchen with all of the leftovers.

There’s a heavy silence.

“Six months in the hospital?” Dean asks, his voice very, very small.

Sam looks over at him. He nods.

“Remember when I was a kid, those asthma attacks I had? And the time I had pneumonia? And all those times I caught the flu? And then the skin thing?”

Dean feels his heart stutter.

Sam swallows. His voice is tight. “Turns out I have an immune disorder,” he says. “It’s not...it’s not the worst it could be but it’s uh...genetic. And serious. And I caught a thing halfway through my junior year and the thing turned into six months on oxygen and losing thirty pounds which meant I basically lost my scholarship and had to drop out. I couldn’t have paid the bills if Jess’s family hadn’t helped,” he answers. “Jess and Ruby, they work. But even with the drugs it’s...risky, for me. And then with the drug interactions and the complications from the stuff that put me in the hospital my heart is all screwed up which is why my diet is so strict and-” He sighs.

Dean pauses a long moment. “Is- is Mary?” He asks.

Sam shakes his head. He smiles. “Nope,” he answers. “As soon as she was born, we checked. And she’s perfect, Dean. Thank God, she’s perfect.” His voice cracks a little.

Dean pauses for a long time. Dad’s death suddenly makes a hell of a lot more sense.

“I’m sorry,” he murmurs. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t- that I couldn’t-” He pauses. “I was so scared,” he says. “I hoped- I thought-”

“It’s not your fault,” Sam says. His hazel eyes are serious. “Dad was trying to...he was trying to hold on as hard as he could. And it’s not your fault that you decided to stay. I realized...a long time ago that- it would have been easier, if you had been here. And I wanted you here. And I’ve missed you, shit, Dean, I’ve missed you. But you being with Dad, that probably kept him alive.” He pauses. “I needed you, Dean, but Dad needed you more. And it wasn’t fair for you to be stuck between us when you’ve got your own life.”

“I left,” he says. “After five years, I uh... I couldn’t any more. And I didn’t have your number but I wanted to, Sam, you have to believe me.” Dean pauses. “I know that doesn’t make up for me not being here for you or...but...Sam…”

His voice peters out. His apology- his regret- they steal his voice from him.

“I know,” Sam answers.

It’s not I forgive you and it’s not I love you. It’s somewhere between. Both of them.

Winchester men, never been real good at the feelings stuff.

“So this guy,” Sam says. It’s all he says. The end dangles on the air.

“I’m uh...I like both, okay?” Dean answers, gruffly.

Sam nods.

“And uh, this one...I’m sticking with,” he continues.

Sam nods again.

They hear laughter outside, breathless and joyful.

“You seem happy,” Sam says.

Dean smiles. He realizes it’s true.

“You do, too,” he murmurs. “Jess and Ruby and the baby- shit, Sam.”

“Yeah,” he answers. “It’s weird for me, too.”

He stands in Sam’s kitchen, in Sam’s house, and Dean realizes that he’s not sure what comes next here.

Sam doesn’t want him to go- he’s effectively twice married (what in the hell) and has a baby. There’s Benny’s boat, waiting for him in Florida. There’s John’s cabin, tucked up in Maine. And there’s Castiel, here. To hold. To love him.To understand him, even if he himself is impossible and strange.

Suddenly, there’s so much. Suddenly, he doesn’t have to run and he doesn’t want to. Doesn’t want to go back on that boat, doesn’t want to leave this behind. His brother. His niece. And Castiel.

He’s not alone, and he doesn’t have to be afraid.

Okay, he thinks.

What comes next?


End file.
